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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933239">A Record of the Eating Days</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex'>fascinationex</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>transformers fics by fascinationex [51]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Laboratory Heist, Monster Perceptor, No Cybertronian Civil War, Non-Canon Worldbuilding, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Science Experiments, Sub Brainstorm, Unethical Experimentation, Xenobiology, fellas is it gay to abscond with a lab specimen bc you want to smooch him, i am trying to give you a clear view of what this fic contains but, mild xeno, not limited to antagonists, probably, soft xeno, vampirism adjacent sexual content, weird sex in this one</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 14:13:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>19,354</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933239</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Brainstorm takes a stopgap job as a cleaner and becomes attached to a very dangerous lab specimen--one he's not even meant to know about.<br/></p><blockquote>
  <p> <em>Brainstorm’s contract did say that he wasn’t supposed to have access to secure rooms in the facility. But with the many-splendoured inducements of curiosity and such mediocre security, he couldn’t help but feel that this was what they called ‘mixed messaging’.</em><br/></p>
</blockquote>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Brainstorm/Perceptor (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>transformers fics by fascinationex [51]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1311599</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>145</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>173</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Brainstorm meets a cute microscope and realises that, <em>unacceptably</em>, people might be doing very cool research and leaving him out of it. Whaaat.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The secure records room was empty after hours.</p><p>

The security camera in the corner of the room flickered its red light, indicating unauthorised movement in its field. But the ping it was supposed to send to the night guard had not been sent after all, and the feed it was supplying was only a copy from one it had recorded last week.
</p><p>
It had been straightforward to ‘find’ a few security passes from those with higher security clearances. They were separate to ID cards, and their permissions weren’t even individualised. Anyone whose security pass was unlocked level had access. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm’s contract did say that he wasn’t supposed to have access to secure rooms in the facility. But with the many-splendoured inducements of curiosity and such mediocre security, he couldn’t help but feel that this was what they called ‘mixed messaging’. So now his light, precise fingers were combing gently through the old data pads and gently unspooling a ‘secure’ (ha!) cable from the heavy duty server machine that hummed away in the corner of the dusty, windowless room. 
</p><p>
It had all begun with a genuine security accident (as opposed to all the less genuine ‘accidents’ happening right now), when Brainstorm’s own pathetically limited security pass had allowed him through a door that had not been supposed to open for him. 
</p><p>
The research company was privately owned, clean and shiny on the outside, impressive to look at. They cut corners elsewhere, but they did like to show a sleek, polished, squeaky-clean face, and, accordingly, all the doors and corridors were pretty much identical: gleaming chrome, reinforced transparasteel, polished titanium. The lights beat down, palest white with a hint of clean blue.</p><p>It was so easy to get lost, especially when one had more interesting and loftier things to think about! Brainstorm had been told right upon signing his contract, by a facility manager who had been much too important to actually provide training (or, say, a map), that he was simply to move fast, clean any room whose door opened for his pass, and not ask questions.</p><p>
(Glamorous work this was not, but Brainstorm told himself—rather a lot, and only a little nervously-that this was merely a stopgap job, before he moved on to better things.)
</p><p>
On this particular occasion, the heavy carbon steel doors he’d half-heartedly flailed his security pass at had beeped, flashed green overhead, and hissed open to allow him and his little cleaning cart into someone’s laboratory.</p><p>The specialisation was not immediately clear: there were scales and balances, fluid baths, glassware, enormous bio-hazard containers with their flashing cyan lights. As many pieces of equipment were almost always supplied by the researchers’ alt modes, it was rarely completely clear what kind of laboratory one had entered unless it was in use. 
</p><p>
Occasionally, Brainstorm thought perhaps he envied the alt modes of ‘more traditional’ researchers, but always on reflection he had to wonder how useful it actually would be to turn into, say, a gas chromatograph, anyway. The prestige and easy acceptance of having a proper research alt might have been nice… But a gas chromatograph didn’t <em>fly</em>, did it? They didn’t go anywhere at all. And Brainstorm wasn’t a chemist.
</p><p>
This one was the first of the even remotely interesting facilities he had actually turned out to have access to, so while he was emptying scrap metal bins and rearranging the furniture for mopping, he had a little, tiny, no-more-than-ten-minutes kind of look around. It had only been a few short months, but he already missed this environment. The soft hum of heavy duty ventilation and scanners, idling… the mixed acrid smells of common reagents… the painfully bright overhead lights (even that one, in the corner, that was <em>inevitably</em> flickering)… </p><p>This could all have been taken from one of the labs at the university.</p><p>Brainstorm cracked his vents open and let his processor drift on the thought. He was a puppet drawn on a string: he let go of the handle of the little cleaning cart and trailed his fingertips absently along one long, battered bench, wandering helplessly forward into the room. His wings relaxed outwards unconsciously.</p><p>He had missed it. His cramped, dim apartment was no substitute.</p><p>
Then he turned a corner into an odd little alcove and thought, aloud, “<em>That’s</em> different.”
</p><p>
<em>His</em> work spaces almost never included live specimens.
</p><p>
It looked, for a moment, very much like a cybertronian mech—with a cute microscope alt mode, even, neat and light-looking, painted a slightly dulled red—but its container was labelled like anything else would have been, and it read a perfunctory ‘MV. R07600.672’.
</p><p>
The abbreviation for a cybertronian mechanism—a person—was CNL, not MV.
</p><p>
...Brainstorm had never seen ‘MV’ before.</p><p>But he wasn’t, like, a life sciences specialist either. 
</p><p> “...Huh.”</p><p>
It <em>looked</em> like a cybertronian.</p><p>
The case in which they were keeping it would never have passed the ethics review committee at a publicly-funded institution, but he supposed that being able to shove your specimens anywhere they fit without all the tiresome ‘ethics’ and ‘safety’ nonsense was one of the benefits to privately funded research, wasn’t it.
</p><p>
“What are you doing in here?” came the shrill voice of a technician, interrupting Brainstorm’s train of thought.
</p><p>
Brainstorm looked away from the puzzling ‘MV’ and over to the speaker, who had seemingly just emerged from a doorway while Brainstorm had been thinking. The tech was, curiously, also a cute microscope, although he was bright blue with uncommon green optics.</p><p>Cute microscopes just everywhere today, apparently. Lucky Brainstorm. He blinked his optics once, slowly.
</p><p>
“Oh! Cleaning,” he said, ignoring that what he was actually doing was more like ‘taking a break to snoop in their lab’. He flashed the technician a bright smile, completely lost behind his blast mask, and then he changed the subject immediately to something actually interesting. “What species is this? Do you keep a lot of live—”
</p><p>
The technician scowled furiously. “The door’s still broken? They said they’d have it fixed before lunch!”
</p><p>
“Oh, that’s a shame,” said Brainstorm, sounding like he cared about that <em>exactly</em> as much as he actually did care about that, which was not even a little bit. “What’s ‘MV’ mean?” 
</p><p>
The technician was evidently not inclined to answer him, and even squirmed into position between Brainstorm and the tank.</p><p>“This is meant to be incredibly confidential,” he said instead, raising his optics to the ceiling. “Look—it was an accident, I know what this place is like. Just leave, and don't talk about this with anyone.”
</p><p>
“Oh, come on,” Brainstorm said, peering over the mech’s shoulder even as he allowed himself to be arranged and herded. He met the optics of the—creature?—in the tank for just a moment, finding them a shockingly bright blue. “That’s the most interesting thing I’ve seen in months!”
</p><p>In that split second, the creature's blue optics narrowed and his head tilted, just a little, considering.</p><p>Brainstorm's fuel tank jolted.</p><p>Oh, whatever he was, he definitely understood that Brainstorm was talking about him.</p><p>
“—ope you got a good look—" Oh, the technician was still talking? "—because you won’t see it again," he finished firmly, putting a hand right on the flat of his wing as though to propel him forward. "Do <em>not</em> make me call security, come on."
</p><p>
Hmm. Brainstorm probably outweighed the average microscope-alt by actual tonnes, but he let himself be pushed. He didn’t mind annoying the technician but he <em>really</em> didn’t want to get into it with security. He needed this job to pay his bills, thank you very much.
</p><p>
“So he’s an ‘it’?” he prompted, even as he gamely allowed himself to be redirected.
</p><p>
“Goodbye,” said the tech, pushing him over the threshold. He clipped one wing on the door frame, which, actually, <em>ouch!</em></p><p>
“Ouch! …Wait!” cried Brainstorm, whirling unsteadily. “My cart!”
</p><p>
“Take it and go!”</p><p>The cleaning cart came careening through the doors a split second before they closed, and Brainstorm grunted as its edge collided with his midsection.
</p><p>
He’d felt like he’d had no choice but to continue on cleaning, which became a lot more boring when he knew that there was undoubtedly some <em>really interesting</em> research going on here behind all these closed doors.</p><p>None of which included Brainstorm!
</p><p>
He felt… left out.
</p><p>
Probably, he realised, because he was, very literally, being left out. Presumably this was because he was signed on as cleaning staff, not as research staff. Because… he wasn’t supposed to do that anymore. Technically. Definitely not in a paid capacity.
</p><p>
Hmm. Well. There was that.</p><p>He did <em>not</em> like feeling left out, though.
</p><p>
So he had ignored the part where it was not just absolutely none of his business, but actively contrary to the contract he’d signed, and organised this little excursion into the secure records room, where he was taking an innocent peek at what was on file from Laboratory 5.
</p><p>
He had expected to get the accounting information, really—these kinds of secure rooms were usually used for the storage of private financial information, such as individual or company charge numbers, which had to be either destroyed or kept accordance with some regulation or other (in which Brainstorm wasn’t very interested). And even private institutions required that everything be ordered centrally and assigned to budget line items, to keep track and ensure that nobody was using company money where it ought not be used.
</p><p>
So he had expected to get a wealth of information about what sort of equipment they were using in there, and who worked there, and what their alt-modes were and how they got paid and where they’d worked previously, all of which would tell him a lot about what they were doing in there.
</p><p>
He hadn’t expected to just reach in and grab a lab report. 
</p><p>
…But he wasn’t mad about it. 
</p><p>
He hummed to himself, and hopped up upon one of the filing boxes, kicking his thrusters gently. He didn’t have <em>much</em> time, but he could skim a few… he could <em>download</em> several to his own cluttered internal storage…
</p><p>
MV, he rapidly learnt, was an abbreviation for <em>metallico vorax.</em>

</p><p>He tapped his fingertips on his own mask, feeling his wings twitch excitedly. There was a little clatter as the ones on his legs followed suit. 
</p><p>
<em>Metallico vorax?</em>
</p><p>
That sounded both super fascinating and unbelievably ominous. 
</p><p>
The species name used the same glyph as ‘sentio metallico’ did—the ‘live wires’ that referred to the core metal of every cybertronian. He couldn’t imagine that was an accident.
</p><p>
That critter wasn’t just <em>vorax</em>-ing any old <em>metallico</em>, Brainstorm would bet. 
</p><p>
…What a shame to keep him all locked up in a case like that!
</p><p>
And then there was a clatter and a beep from somewhere outside the room, so Brainstorm cringed at  the thought of being caught—and fired, probably, or <em>worse</em>—and shoved all those things away. Several of the reports had downloaded, at least.
</p><p>
He checked his down link into the security feeds to ensure the coast was clear—not that every corridor and room was captured, because, uh, cheapskates, probably, but if he could simply count guards and other cleaners then he could figure it all out for himself, couldn’t he—and then slunk out of the room before allowing that security camera to continue with its regular feed again. 
</p><p>
It was nearly seamless.
</p><p>
Hopefully nobody was going to ask why the PI from Lab 9 was swiping into and out of the secure records rooms in the late evenings.
</p><p>
Or why Brainstorm left work twenty minutes late. 
</p><p>
He said <em>nearly</em>, okay.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Brainstorm: wow that monster is cute<br/>Brainstorm: haha i hope this doesn't awaken anything in me</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Brainstorm breaks a few teeny tiny rules and says hi to a funky monster.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next ‘security accident’ was… <em>almost</em> not Brainstorm's fault. It was a real accident, at least.</p><p>Brainstorm had dedicated some of his free time and limited funds to making the Disinfectotron2000 from salvaged metal (he had scrapped all remains of the Disinfectotron1000. Some ideas were simply too grand and beautiful for a twenty-credit-an-hour job), and although it <em>looked</em> like a shambling pile of discoloured scrap metal, it did its job just fine—perfectly, in fact! It had been born of Brainstorm’s unparalleled genius, so he could hardly be surprised.
</p><p>
For evenings now, Brainstorm had been letting his cute drone roam the halls, attracted by all messes great and small. It clanked and clattered, extending its ragged-looking scrappy legs and wheeling along on them, mopping floors (and walls), cleaning windows and slurping up dust with at least 15% greater efficiency than Brainstorm could manage. </p><p>

He’d had the vague fantasy of making a fleet of the little things and renting them out or selling them—then <em>he</em> could focus on his own, much more important projects without, say, being evicted. But then he thought about how boring it would be to make Disinfectotron2000 again, over and over, exactly the same, when he already knew everything there was to know about how to do that. </p><p>

No. Terrible. </p><p>

Much better to go forward with his first plan, which was to take all the actual, unfortunate cleaning out of his job as a cleaner and use his working hours for information gathering—by which he meant snooping. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm had already ‘redistributed’, or downloaded all of Laboratory 5’s reports with nobody the wiser. With the Disinfectotron2000, he’d had time to erase any telltale records of his access to the secure records room. Now he spent a possibly-conspicuous amount of his time manually mopping the floors in the same corridor as the laboratory entrance, listening to whatever he could hear within. Which… wasn’t that much, regrettably. 
</p><p>
The metallilco vorax was, if he read between the lines of the reports (and he did), at least as intelligent as the researchers studying it, although they didn’t seem too inclined to look into that. There were tantalising comments in the footnotes about how disappointed they had been when the MV’s alt-mode had ‘settled’ into a mimicry of one of the researchers’ and not into whatever it had been—unstated, frustratingly—that they’d expected. 
</p><p>
Almost all of their real examinations seemed to be tiresomely focused on the creature’s unsavoury fuelling habits: was the sentio metallico truly necessary for its survival? Would it eat mechanimals, if no other option presented itself? Were those mechanimals sufficient? How long could it go without its grizzly fuel? There were detailed diagrams of its anatomy and heavily annotated vivisection footage. As far as Brainstorm could tell, they were taking a kitchen sink approach to this area of investigation—but, if feeding it without the sentio metallico was even their true goal, they were making little headway. 
</p><p>
Inevitably, he mused on this as he mopped, until he realised that he was starting to make weird marks in this part of the floor and that he was going to have to at least pretend to move to a patch that was a little closer to the door—conspicuously close? Hard to judge. 
</p><p>
His cleaning cart glided across the smooth dark floors when he pulled it along, unsettlingly frictionless on a floor that had been mopped to within an inch of its life. 
</p><p>
The Disinfectotron2000 clattered around the corner of the corridor, beeping cheerfully and whirring deep inside. It probably needed more of the standard chemical cleanser in use in the building—Brainstorm had discarded several more complex designs as too expensive to make, so it needed to be topped up every so often. 
</p><p>
These were the sad extremes to which his circumstances had brought him. Brainstorm did not miss grant applications, but he certainly missed <em>grants</em>.
</p><p>
He let go of the cart handle—trusting it to stop—so he could grab the bottle of cleanser that magnetised to the side of it. 
</p><p>
It… did not stop. 
</p><p>
In his fruitless snooping, Brainstorm had cleaned and polished the floors outside Laboratory 5 to a dangerous smoothness, and now the cleaning cart continued to roll at the same pace without his direction. His fingers closed on empty air instead of the bottle of cleanser. 
</p><p>
He watched with a suddenly-plummeting fuel tank as the cart sailed past him.</p><p>Crash!</p><p>It smacked into the wall and the waste receptacle titled, smearing a trail of filth in its wake as it skidded, little wheels screeching, to a halt.
</p><p>
The noise was loud. Brainstorm cringed—first at the idea that someone might come wheeling around the corner into this corridor just to investigate the sound, and then even harder at the thought of cleaning up the mess. His wings made a short and unhappy downwards twitch. </p><p>Noooo.
</p><p>
The Disinfectotron2000 had its own ideas, though, and accelerated forward to slurp up the new mess as a priority. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm had thought it would be useful—or, alright, maybe not useful but at least cool—to have it zoom faster towards the biggest messes it could sense with its rudimentary little scanners—a speedy prioritisation that made it act as though it had an internal sense of urgency. And it was cool! The Disinfectotron2000 was <em>extremely cool</em>, and it also it definitely worked completely perfectly and had not glitched in any way.
</p><p>
So it zoomed at the wall of the laboratory at top speed and then it, of course, slammed right into that wall. It skidded along it, and made a horribly <em>skree-ee-ee</em> until it clipped the ID and security access panels next to the laboratory’s door. 
</p><p>
It came to rest, whirring fitfully, ragged little scrap-metal legs kicking pitifully in the air. 
</p><p>
Above it, the door’s ID panel flashed green. And the doors hissed right on open. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm paused. He could already smell the soft familiar chemical smells of biohazard cleaners. He took a step forward, almost involuntarily…
</p><p>
If there had been anyone anywhere on this floor, they would have come up to see what all the crashing was about. He could just… He could… 
</p><p>
He righted the cart, righted the Disinfectotron2000, and poured more cleanser. He made a note to adjust its acceleration rules later. 
</p><p>
Then, wings fluttering very happily indeed, he scampered on into the lab.
</p><p>
These unfortunate security accidents just seemed to keep happening, and facility management should really look into them. Perhaps he’d even tell someone…? Later, though, when they weren’t personally benefiting Brainstorm.
</p><p>
He made a beeline towards the tank where he knew the metallico vorax was kept, pushing aside a wheeled display board that was in the way.
</p><p>
Finally, he could see it again. It seemed so incredibly Cybertronian to look at, standing there all still and quiet in its tiny transparasteel case. Like the very model of a cute microscope, really—although now Brainstorm knew that the anatomy beneath that dull red plating was only sort of the same as a mech’s, and that the microscope alt itself was modelled on that of the technician who worked in this lab. 
</p><p>
The colours were different, though. And the optics were a bright, bright blue, in dramatic contrast to the dullness of the rest of his plating. 
</p><p>
He looked back at Brainstorm and, as Brainstorm inched closer, a tiny furrow worked into the metal between his optics. He even knew how to do expressions! How exciting. Not one of the reports had mentioned <em>that</em>. That was bad reporting, that was. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm extended his field tentatively. The lab reports had mentioned in passing that the metallico vorax’s field was ‘unlike a mech’s’, but had failed to elaborate on even so much as the wavelength difference, let alone more qualitative considerations…
</p><p>
At first all he got was a blink: thin metal sliding down to protect the optical lens, a response produced by most cybertronians (and this metallico vorax, apparently) in surprise. But then Brainstorm felt it: a wash of an alien EM field up against his own, tangling its rough edges in with his. 
</p><p>
It <em>didn’t</em> feel much like a regular cybertronian mech’s EM field would have, that was true. Where he naturally expected smooth, impersonal, baseline warmth, this field was—cold, and… unsettlingly close and raw. It was like reaching out to pat someone on the arm, realising they had no outer plating, and shoving one’s hand right into their protometal instead.</p><p>
Brainstorm twitched, but he didn’t retract his own field. That was… interesting.
</p><p>
But, despite its strange intimacy and odd coolness, what the metallico vorax’s field did do exactly like every other mech’s (and why Brainstorm now theorised this lab hadn’t studied the phenomenon more closely when any other avenue of research was open to them) was <em>convey information</em>.
</p><p>
The field was sharply curious. It was interested, and somehow simultaneously bored out of its processor (it definitely had one of those—Brainstorm had checked the diagrams), and it was sore and hungry and, just at present, very anxious. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm didn’t feel a moment’s concern for the moral implications of the research they were doing here—Brainstorm’s moral stance was best characterised as ‘lying down’. But he wasn’t completely unmoved by the feelings of other people when they were right in front of him. He was squeamish; he didn’t like being in pain, and he didn’t particularly like inflicting pain with his own hands either. It was one reason he’d never done well with live subjects in school, and had avoided those areas of investigation as much as possible.
</p><p>
His mouth twisted beneath his blast mask. The EM field might not have felt particularly like a mech’s, but all those feelings—those sore, tired, bored, anxious little threads—certainly did. 
</p><p>
The metallico vorax twitched his field to get his attention. He had a surprisingly delicate touch with it. </p><p>

He didn’t have the room to stretch his arm out and point, but he could raise his hand and tap on the transparasteel. Brainstorm’s optics followed where he gestured, and—ah, the display board. Right, right. It had been facing him, hadn’t it?
</p><p>
“Sorry, were you reading something?” Maybe they’d left it to entertain him. He was stuck in the case, after all. “You know, I just got, erm, excited, you see—I’m not really meant to be here,” he rambled as he wheeled the board back into viewing distance for the captive MV. 
</p><p>
One of the display’s wheels squeaked quietly as it rolled. Brainstorm poked it with one thruster, rolling it back and forward on the spot. Squeak. Squeeaak. Hm.
</p><p>
A stab of frustration lanced through the creature’s field where it was still entwined with Brainstorm’s. Brainstorm looked back over one wing to those sharp blue optics. The metallico vorax jabbed his finger towards the board again. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm looked back at the board. His wings and his head tilted in unison, thoughtful.
</p><p>
He rested his chin in one hand, scanning the experimental proposal laid out on the display. “Hmm… it’s pretty uncommon to invite a subject to have any input on experimental design,” he commented, bemused. 
</p><p>
He couldn’t imagine the subject that would agree to this one, either.</p><p>It was another vivisection—he’d already read about a couple of others. This one would remove, dissect, scan and investigate the metallico vorax’s fuel tank (singular) and pumps (plural) for anomalies. They’d then weld them back together, replace them in his frame and allow him to recover again.
</p><p>
“Do they want you to… review it?” He tapped his mask.
</p><p>
There was more frustration, prickly with dread and anxiety. Brainstorm frowned, wings ticking, testing air currents, as though the feelings thrumming in that EM field could brush by the sensors in his wings like smoke on a breeze. 
</p><p>
He reread it. “Aha,” he said finally, and went looking for a stylus. Usually he’d just plug in and fix it, but if he did, they’d know who had been in the lab. He was going to have to rearrange their security footage as it was. 
</p><p>He found one at someone’s work station, on top of a pin up calendar of military jets. This month’s image was of a red, white and blue jet, polished to a glowing sheen, staring out at the viewer and licking the barrel of a gun, which was long enough to obscure most of the details behind his missing modesty plating. Probably, you were supposed to look at the model, and not notice the contrast of his shining sleek frame and the clearly misaligned sights of the weapon. But Brainstorm’s optics lingered on the gun. </p><p>He went back to the display and the captive monster.</p><p>“You know, you’re awfully lucky I—er—accidentally found my way in here,” he commented as he struck out the equation for the sedative gas and rewrote it with the decimal in the correct place. “No matter <em>what</em> you are, I can’t imagine a dose ten times too high would have gone like a cloudless flight for you.”
</p><p>
There was a wash of relief when he stood back and presented the display board again. Relief, and a little hint of achievement. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm wondered if the monster got to communicate with other mechs very often. If this had been <em>his</em> project, Brainstorm would never have let his field touch his. Hmm. 
</p><p>
“You’re also lucky that you ran unto someone of my incomparable genius, of course,” he added. “It’s nothing at all for <em>me</em> to find and correct such an error in just a <em>casual glance</em>, but for anyone else—”
</p><p>
And now that field was communicating nothing so much as exasperation instead. <em>Rude</em>. Brainstorm flicked one wing in an admonition that half the researchers here couldn’t understand, let alone a captive monster with limited social experience. His bright optics zoomed in and fixed on the movement, though, watching intently.
</p><p>He had a nice face, Brainstorm could not help but notice. It wasn’t modelled on any of the other staff, so it was presumably all his own. A little narrow, a little sharp, a little too serious, but with even and regular features. There had been no statement in the files that the metallico vorax was a species that used any more conscious deception for predation than any other aggressive mimic. But the subject settled his blue optics on Brainstorm’s face and tangled their fields closer together, and Brainstorm had to wonder if he was just that lonely—or simply that dangerous.</p><p>Brainstorm did so like dangerous things. He watched him in there for a few long minutes, cataloguing all the many ways in which he looked exactly like a regular, unassuming mechanism.</p><p>If Brainstorm hadn’t seen the vivisection footage, he might have been fooled.</p><p>
“I have to go, though,” Brainstorm admitted at last, wrinkling his face behind his mask and dropping his wings expressively. This was the most interesting thing he’d done in months. He licked his mouth—pit, he could already feel the metallico vorax’s field twining harder through his own, sharp little spikes of feeling burrowing deeper, even though the feelings he allowed through lost all their friendliness and became a study in stony neutrality. 
</p><p>
There was something hauntingly relatable about a weird creature trying to reach out, and desperately trying to protect itself from that vulnerability at the same time. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm smiled behind his mask, letting his optics brighten and his wings flick upwards with it. Very gently, he tapped the transparasteel. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back—how could I stay away?”
</p><p>
He laid his hand flat on the case, careful not to mark it. 
</p><p>
Behind the clear material, the monster did the same, laying his fingertips in careful alignment with Brainstorm’s. His hands were only a little smaller. For a second, the connection of their fields was that much stronger and Brainstorm got a glimpse of both his iron discipline and ravenous hunger. 
</p><p>
He left his hand there for the spin of a spark. 
</p><p>
But then he heard the Disinfectotron2000 smack into something outside and whirr plaintively.
</p><p>
“I’ll be back,” he promised again, letting his vents crack open and closed reflexively. He meant it. 
</p><p>
And then he left.
</p><p>
When he got back outside Laboratory 5, he discovered the Disinfectotron2000 trying to eat the cleaning cart’s waste receptacle and heaved a sigh through his vents. He had a long shift ahead of him now, he could tell—and he hadn’t even accounted for doctoring the security footage, yet.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>An ill-planned heist.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Brainstorm thought about the metallico vorax a lot. Even though he should not have. Perhaps especially because he should not have.</p><p>

He felt the edge of the creature’s EM field every time he passed the laboratory now—which was as often as he could manage it—all… cool, sharp, seeking and sore. Their brief entanglement had increased his sensitivity.</p><p>

Brainstorm wondered, too, about the display board.</p><p>

It wasn’t Brainstorm’s business, of course… but neither was anything else he cheerfully inserted his overclocked nosecone into.</p><p>

That metallico vorax—he wasn’t a <em>mech</em>. He didn’t have the right to veto his own vivisections. Why then leave the display there overnight, for the creature to read? To think about? To wonder about, for the long, silent night, all alone in the laboratory after hours?</p><p>

He thought about it off and on, coming back to irritate the idea like a weld that hadn’t healed fully.</p><p>

It was clear they weren’t taking amazing care of their research subject there—that had been obvious from the outset, of course, even by something as simple as the size of its case—but there was a <em>particular</em> cruelty in the set-up of that display board.</p><p>

The thought fermented, bubbling and increasing in pressure as he read through all the work that had already been completed with regard to the weird and fascinating creature. As he resentfully did his job—well, alright, idly rolled his cleaning cart and supervised the Disinfectotron2000.10 doing his job—he processed their reports and ruminated irritably on the flaws in the incredibly uninspired research the staff here were working on.</p><p>

They knew next to nothing about what nutrients the metallico vorax needed specifically that couldn’t be got in regular energon, despite multiple investigations of its digestive system and fuel analyses. Their work hadn’t included anything about the creature’s social development, or its ability to express itself—it seemed clear that it spoke, from some of the reports, and clearly it could understand enough arithmetic to correct its researchers’… There were conclusions that Brainstorm had drawn from their work that hadn’t even made it into the discussions or their reports, confounding variables that apparently nobody had noticed, one notable occasion on which they had allowed the metallico vorax to get a rust infection… </p><p>

It wasn’t even that he was so upsettingly excluded from the cool research that could have been going on. It was that they were doing it <em>so badly</em> and he was <em>here</em>, pushing a <em>cleaning cart</em>.</p><p>

(Okay, it was both.)</p><p>

There was nothing for it, Brainstorm was going to <em>have</em> to break in again.</p><p>

There were no ‘security accidents’ this time. The repaired door to Laboratory 5 did not stop him. Brainstorm looped the security footage with the ease of someone who had gotten an awful lot of recent practice, fed the ID reader the mechanometrics for the lab’s PI, and swiped in with his slightly altered security pass.</p><p>

The door opened smoothly and no alarms or notifications hit the systems, which he had broken into to monitor. </p><p>

He vented on his security pass as though to blow off dust as he strolled in. </p><p>

“That’s right. <em>Who</em> circumvented your entire security system in under ten minutes? <em>Brainstorm</em>, that’s who.” The fact that there was no audience for this posturing lessened its satisfaction somewhat—but not enough to quiet him. </p><p>

He tucked the security pass back into his subspace and felt his wings relax against his plating as the doors hissed gently closed behind him. </p><p>

This time when he reached the case he found the metallico vorax looking a little the worse for wear: his polish was even duller—evidence of nanites put to work urgently elsewhere with little chance for replenishment—and he was welded up in long, raised lines across his chest plates, which nobody had bothered to grind down to plate-level. </p><p>

Brainstorm frowned at him. He pushed his field out a little and got a sluggish response. In his case, the monster cracked his optics open, revealing a tiny strip of dully glowing blue. His EM field was responsive, but it didn’t look like he was going to be interested in much talking. Not that he even could talk, from inside the case. </p><p>

Brainstorm felt put out—he’d gone to such lengths to get in here, and the metallico vorax was, what? Too <em>tired</em> to respond to him?</p><p>

He made a deeply dissatisfied noise through his ventilation system. </p><p>

That was scrap, wasn’t it? Honestly this whole facility was pretty much a steaming pile of red-hot slag. </p><p>

Look at him. Brainstorm. Resorting to sneaking around after hours because nobody would share their research with him—him, <em>Brainstorm</em>! Even though he could run rings around them in their own specialities (if he did say so himself—which he did). </p><p>

He rapped his knuckles sharply on the case. “Hey!”</p><p>

The EM field twitched, a little reactive. With effort the monster opened his optics all the way. They filled with light as the covers retracted, bright and glowing.</p><p>

Brainstorm wet his mouth behind his blast mask and flicked one wing. “You wanna get outta here?”</p><p>

There was one long slow blink, thin protective plates sliding across the monster’s optics and opening again. A dubious expression crossed his face. A series of similarly hopeful-but-cynical feelings flashed through the EM field. </p><p>

Brainstorm lifted his wings wide and high and puffed out his chest so the lights gleamed on the glossy surface of his canopy. “Have a little faith,” he insisted. “I cracked this security system in ten minutes flat. I’m sure I can get you out of that.”</p><p>

He was, too. Obviously there was no getting out from the inside, or else the monster would have done it already, but it should have been relatively simple to open the case from the outside—that was where the researchers all were, after all.</p><p>

Brainstorm poked around at the mechanisms of the case for a few minutes, ticking his wings at the puzzle it presented and murmuring to himself. The EM Field of the metallico vorax twined and tangled unpredictably through his own, muted beneath its weariness and ranging from anticipation all the way through what Brainstorm could only interpret as cynical resentment. </p><p>

“Ah,” he said at last. “Luckily, I still have this—” And he pulled out his security pass. He should still have the same access as the lab’s PI, so the security scanner should be a piece of ener-cake. As for the code to the locks—well, he probably could have just run his processor through the possible combinations, but it would have taken hours. </p><p>

He laid one finger across his blast mask where his mouth was, said, “Shh,” and winked at the monster before he went to riffle instead through the datapads and flimsy notes in the lab. It took only about eight minutes to find the right combination, left carelessly where anybody could have found it, under a datapad a locked drawer at someone’s workstation.</p><p>

It did occur to Brainstorm, however perfunctorily, that the metallico vorax might, well, want to <em>vorax</em> up all <em>Brainstorm’s</em> metallico, so to speak. This made him hesitate for approximately two seconds.</p><p>

Then he shrugged his wings and said, “It’s <em>your</em> job not to eat me, all right?” </p><p>

He plugged in the code anyway. </p><p>

Immediately, it asked for him to scan his security pass, which he did. </p><p>

With a soft slow hiss of escaping air, the case unsealed. It smelled terrible in there: concentrated <em>eau de injury</em>, like dead nanites and ancient, dry fuel.</p><p>

Appalled, Brainstorm gagged, vents slamming shut and filters clanking deep in his frame. “Eugh,” he said, vocaliser staticky. </p><p>

The sounds of the monster’s frame were suddenly audible, too: fans hissing softly deep in his body, joints creaking. His optics were somehow brighter without the reinforced transparasteel between them. Brainstorm cleared his vents and blinked at them, lost in the unearthly glow.</p><p> 

“Hello,” said the terrible, horrible, monstrous metellico vorax, eater of good little cybertronians. He had a soft, gentle-sounding voice that fell a little flat, and an extraordinarily educated accent. “I don’t believe I know your name.”</p><p>

“Er,” said Brainstorm, who had not been completely ready to confront the <em>reality</em> of letting the monster out of his case, which in this case included socialising and introductions and all sorts of things that weren’t just demonstrating his enormous genius to a fascinating and receptive audience. <em><strong>Frag</strong></em>. “Brains—”</p><p>

He stopped mid-word, because while he had been staring at the blue optics of the cute microscope, the containment system had sent an automated notification to all staff members who worked in Laboratory 5 to say the containment system had been opened. It wasn’t an alarm—just a routine notification with a timestamp, probably intended for record keeping purposes, but used as an extra layer of security in practice.</p><p>

One that Brainstorm hadn’t predicted. </p><p>

“It’s good to finally speak with you. I’m Perceptor,” said the monster—Perceptor, apparently, which was an <em>extremely cute</em> name for a microscope, but not one Brainstorm had the luxury of paying due attention to right then. </p><p>

He checked the systems he was monitoring once more and it became clear that the idiot whose identity he was, erm, borrowing, had already commed security. </p><p>

“Well… that’s…” His fans whined under the sudden weight of his anxiety. “Frag.”</p><p>

“…Excuse me?”</p><p>

He grabbed the metallico vorax by the elbow—his plating was rough, in a bad way—and ignored the wild look that flicked through his blue optics at the sudden contact. </p><p>

“Perceptor. Nice, cool, cool, we need to go now.”</p><p>

He tugged at him. </p><p>

“You triggered an alarm,” said Perceptor (perceptively!), even as two steps made it immediately apparent that he wasn’t going anywhere under his own power very fast. Right, right, injured. What did they transport injured mechs with? Gurneys? Stretchers? Ambula—</p><p>

“Cart!” cried Brainstorm, and hauled him stumbling to the door, beyond which lay his little cleaning cart.</p><p>

“<em>In</em> the cart?” Perceptor said, not sounding convinced. </p><p>

“Correct!” he said, with zero volume control. “<em>In the cart</em>!” 

He was cooperative when Brainstom tried to shove him atop it. The metal groaned under his weight, and poor Perceptor clenched his hands on the sides tightly.</p><p>

Brainstorm could see security mechs moving on the feeds he was patched into throughout the facility. There was one coming up upon the laboratory right that moment, and Brainstorm was ill-equipped—physically! And also emotionally!—for confrontation. </p><p>

He grabbed the handles and pushed, and together he, Perceptor and the cleaning cart careened down the shiny and well-polished corridor and toward the elevator at its end. </p><p>

They stopped and stood there while Brainstorm awkwardly jabbed the button as though he could call the elevator faster through the power of more jabbing.</p><p>

“Have you… quite thought this through?” Perceptor wondered, looking around from his uncomfortable perch in the cleaning cart. </p><p>

“Haha!” barked Brainstorm, and then he didn’t answer that question and jabbed the button again. Click. Click-click. <em>Come on</em>.</p><p>

The first security mech arrived on the scene before the elevator did, which was exactly the way Brainstorm had hoped events would not occur. He was easily twice Brainstorm’s size. He had jade green polish, and some kind of construction-work alt-mode and big, rugged-looking wheels. </p><p>

It would probably be rude, Brainstorm thought despairingly, to just leave Perceptor sitting in his cart in the corridor. He tried to come up with some really good excuse for them to be standing out there. Security clearly knew that there was a subject kept inside Laboratory 5, and he probably couldn’t bluff. So what? Building fire and evacuation? <em>Janitorial emergency</em>?</p><p>

And, pit, he’d broken the metallico vorax out now—who knew what would happen to him if they took him back? </p><p>

…Brainstorm knew what <em>he</em> did with contaminated samples.</p><p> 

Frag.</p><p>

The guard’s shadow fell over Brainstorm. He looked nervously sideways to find that it half covered the cleaning cart, too.</p><p>

“Put your hands and internal weaponry up where I can see them,” he rumbled in a voice so deep it was practically cthonic.</p><p>

Brainstorm’s wings trembled with his nervousness. The guard’s gun didn’t look like an especially cool or unique one, but at this range anything would do the job. He wasn’t a soldier. His canopy was made of <em>acrylic</em>. </p><p>

“Hel-lo,” Brainstorm babbled, lifting his arms even as his wings drooped to stick out straight in shaky anxiety. </p><p>

In the cart, Perceptor did not move, but watched the guard approach with sharp and assessing optics. </p><p>

“Nice night for a, erm, minor misunderstanding, isn’t it—”</p><p>

“Yup,” said the guard, coming ever closer, one enormously oversize foot at a time. The barrel of his gun didn’t waver. “You can explain it in full once you’re in the stasis cuffs.”</p><p>

“Right. Yes. That’s—very reasonable of you, I’m sure—” Could Brainstorm get <em>out</em> of stasis cuffs? He could certainly get them off from the outside, but—</p><p>

In the moment the guard moved his hand to retrieve his cuffs, Perceptor reached out and, with the most spark-freezingly horrific shriek of tortured metal, tore his gun-arm right off at the shoulder. </p><p>

Ripped wires crackled and sparked. Fuel sprayed from the injury, spattering Brainstorm’s shocked optics and raised hands, splashing the cart and drawing a sharp line across Perceptor’s otherwise placid face. </p><p>

Brainstorm and the guard both shrieked. Brainstorm was louder.</p><p>

Then the elevator dinged into the deafening silence that followed that noise, and the doors opened. </p><p>

“Brains,” said Perceptor, as the guard staggered away, trampling his own stasis cuffs. Pink fuel drooled from his shoulder to the ground, falling with a thick wet slap. </p><p>

“Uh,” said Brainstorm. “Yes! Yes.” He shoved the cart—and its cargo—inside, stumbled in after them and then jammed his finger into the CLOSE DOOR button. CLOSE DOOR, CLOSE DOOR, CLOSE DOOR.</p><p>

The doors closed, unhurried, just as the guardsmech was starting to gather his wits and look around for his gun.</p><p>

Brainstorm’s fuel pump slammed along so hard he was shocked his plates weren’t jumping with it.</p><p>The elevator was quiet, sounds from outside muffled. The light above was yellower and flickering. It lit everything, including (particularly, perhaps) all the spilled energon, without mercy.</p><p>

Brainstorm hit the button for the basement. From there they’d emerge into the shuttle bus storage and have a straight shot for an exit.</p><p>

A sideways look at Perceptor showed the metallico vorax was digging out the major fuel line from the security guard’s dismembered arm, having braced it between his knees in the cart for the operation. He looked almost elegant when he excavated it and sucked out the insides—where the sentio metallico would be, in an arm, Brainstorm supposed—to consume.</p><p> 

Right. <em>Right</em>. </p><p>

He managed to clean off his face and fingers quite fastidiously, and then turfed the arm from his cart. It fell to the elevator floor with a solid <em>thunk</em> that made Brainstorm’s shoulders and wings jerk nervously.</p><p>

“What plan do you intend to enact to secure our immediate departure?” asked Perceptor, catching a stray drop of fuel from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. He inspected it, then licked it clean. </p><p>

Brainstorm was so caught up in watching that spectacle that it took him a moment to register the question. </p><p>

“Oh,” he said, when at last he did. “Ah. That.”</p><p>

Perceptor’s unnervingly blue optics blinked at him. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>chapter note same as always: if there's something you liked about this chapter, please feel free to tell me in a comment. otherwise have a good night.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Brainstorm's many and varied talents  do extend to turning bad plans into <strong>really</strong> bad plans!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Brainstorm kept monitoring the security channels and tried to ignore the increasingly tacky fuel on his plating as the elevator descended. It was unhurried on its path, humming gently around them. On the feeds, Brainstorm could see a knot of panicked security mechs milling around the one-armed guard they’d left behind. It was good to know that it wasn’t just Brainstorm who had never seen someone’s arm ripped clean off before, at least. But they were still organising their pursuit, and that meant that he and Perceptor did need a plan to get out. 
</p><p>
“The plan is,” said Brainstorm, with perhaps a tiny bit more confidence than he technically felt, “when the elevator doors open, I transform, you climb inside and we run.”
</p><p>
Perceptor looked curiously at him. Brainstorm could feel his bright blue optics scanning him from wingtip to foot, and his wings tilted up and spread out, responding quite naturally—which he didn’t even register until one of them clanked gently against the side of the elevator. 
</p><p>
It was unclear even to Brainstorm if this was nervousness or personal interest. 
</p><p>
Perceptor was both scary and fascinating and also a cute microscope, and it was already evident to Brainstorm that his decision making processes might have been a little… compromised.</p><p>Exhibit A: everything about his present situation. 
</p><p>
“I’ve not observed any obvious wheels on your frame,” Perceptor said slowly. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm turned his own head and stared at him. The elevator’s overhead light flickered. 
</p><p>
Comically, he waved his wings—primary and secondary ones, all six—in unison. 
</p><p>
Perceptor’s optics abandoned his face and zoomed in on their movements. The optics blinked.
</p><p>
“Ah. Your wings are—functional,” Perceptor said, “I see.”
</p><p>
“Have you seriously never seen a jet before?” Brainstorm wondered. How long had Perceptor lived in that laboratory, surrounded only by those with vehicle and research equipment alt-modes?
</p><p>
‘GROUND’ read the display of the elevator. He vented unsteadily out, fans stuttering quietly. 
</p><p>
“Not in the metal,” said Perceptor. “Scattergraph had—artwork, sometimes.”
</p><p>
Brainstorm remembered the pin-up calendar—a red, white and blue military jet with a dramatic coat of gloss, licking a gun barrel. ‘Artwork’. How delicate. The thought startled him out of his increasingly circling thoughts with a little snort of laughter through his vents. 
</p><p>
“Right,” he said. He could still feel Perceptor’s optics on his wings and had to fight his natural reflex to allow all the panels of their plating to crack open and flash little tempting hints of wire and protoform beneath. </p><p>

‘BASEMENT’ read the elevator’s display. </p><p>

At long last, the doors dinged quietly again. </p><p>

Brainstorm really did crack open all his seams then—but with more purpose than just flirting.</p><p>

A jet—even a very light one like Brainstorm—had a longer takeoff time than a propeller aircraft. He had only a few basement-level camera feeds to alert him to movement. Just because it seemed all quiet down here so far didn’t mean it really was. They had to be ready to move fast.</p><p>

His two engines came alive with a low whine and a vibration that shook the air in the confined elevator space. His transformation cog made a frustrated grinding noise, probably audible to only him, but there wasn’t enough room yet. Not yet. Not yet… </p><p>

Laboriously, Perceptor heaved himself out from the bed of the cart. Its wheels squeaked at the change in weight, and its light metal frame creaked in protest, but it held steady. The sensors in Brainstorm’s wings tracked his movements as he braced himself against the wall of the elevator. </p><p>

His optics blinked rapidly in the rush of air Brainstorm was already generating. </p><p>

“This seems like a high risk plan,” he said, even as the doors to the elevator began to open. </p><p>

Chemical anxiety had already flooded all Brainstorm’s systems. Against the rapid thump of his fuel pump, the doors opened underwater-slow.</p><p>

“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” he said, between his teeth, although he was sort of thinking the same thing himself. He initialised transformation before the doors were fully open and only just clipped one wing on the way out. He was so worked up, vibrating with the anticipation of flight from pursuit, that he barely felt it. </p><p>

Perceptor took two wobbling strides and Brainstorm performed an ungraceful twist that strained his landing gear—ouch—but helped scoop him clumsily into his cockpit. Once he was inside, Perceptor could figure out how to get himself into the seat properly. Brainstorm slammed his canopy back into place and focused on the outside instead.</p><p>He surged forward into the underground car park. </p><p>

There were carrier busses down here—the downside of so many research alt modes in one place as that only two or three of them had vehicle modes for travel. Triple changers just weren’t that common. Most of them were not rich enough to keep a real vehicle on call, so they pooled for a taxi or used the lifeless carrier busses kept down here. </p><p>

The shapes of the hulking busses loomed out of the shadows between support columns, uncannily like someone’s alt-mode, even though none of them gave off the heat of a real Cybertronian.</p><p>

Brainstorm’s nervousness skyrocketed as he began to pick up speed and close in on the exit. He could see security moving on his feeds and they were very, very close. </p><p>

“Buckle in,” he said with synthetic bravado to Perceptor. </p><p>

He felt the strange shift of Perceptor's dense, warm weight moving inside, possibly looking for an actual buckle—which Brainstorm did not have—</p><p>

He heard the dull metal grind of the rolling door begin to slide and he swore loudly. </p><p>

“Brains?” said Perceptor. He could probably hear him very clearly indeed from inside his cockpit. </p><p>

“Busy!” Brainstorm could see the exit now. Light lanced in beneath its slowly descending door. </p><p>

Armed security guards were pouring out of the second elevator now, loud in his audial receptors and clear on his feed.</p><p>

He kept swearing even as he gathered speed. Perceptor was shoved back by the swiftness of his acceleration, pressed hard against the padded seat in his cockpit. Brainstorm ignored his uncomfortable jostling.</p><p>

He knew he had nearly no chance of escaping this without consequences if he let them trap him via the closed door, but his processor had already calculated that his swiftest speed would barely be enough to make it.</p><p>

Brainstorm <em>hated</em> pain. He would have liked to have been silent and cool and competent, but he was shrieking and cringing even as he shot through the gap remaining beneath that rolling door and out into the clean air. Metal peeled away with a strut-rattling squeal as the lower edge dragged across his dorsal plating. </p><p>

Once free of the basement, he was so panicked that he barely felt the stripy boom gate crack and break across his nosecone. He blasted down the road ahead, faster and faster, even as security spilled out into the starlight from the building. </p><p>

With a dull roar of effort from deep within his frame, he launched them both into the air. </p><p>

“Oh!” he distantly heard Perceptor say. <em>Oh</em>, like that was at all adequate for this situation. He thought he could feel him clutching at the sides of his seat, but his processor was fixed on speed and thrust and air currents, and flooded with mechadrenaline besides. It was hard to say what anything might have been, except the sky and the fierce cold rush of air.</p><p>

Brainstorm saw the flash of the mechanisms below opening fire with his rear sensors. Opening fire! On him! For stealing a <em>laboratory sample</em>?</p><p>His engines squealed miserably as he pushed them harder, desperate for height.</p><p>He didn’t have the speed or thick armour of a military jet currently in service, but he was light and manoeuvrable in the air, and he tilted and twisted acrobatically as he went.</p><p>

The chemical fear was still pounding away in perfect time with his thundering fuel pump. The perception of how bad-aft he must have looked, busting out and zooming athletically and gracefully into the sky, was insufficient to drown out his panic and anxiety as the firearms flashed below. </p><p>

A shot very nearly hit him and it was an outside possibility that Brainstorm squealed in terror as its tremendous momentum threw him off course. </p><p>

He had to over-correct to return to a neutral wing alignment, which… consumed more fuel than he expected?</p><p>

“Brains?” Percepetor’s voice was clear only because part of Brainstorm’s comm suite folded into his cockpit. </p><p>He really did keep calling him ‘Brains’ like that. This… was not his preferred name, but it was kind of cute that Perceptor had come up with a nickname for him. Maybe he didn’t know it sounded ridiculous.</p><p>“Yeah?"</p><p>"We are exceptionally high up—” Ah! There was a hand on his controls? Brainstorm twitched until it went away. It had been a very long time since he’d flown a passenger. <em>Weird.</em> “Are you certain this will be safe?”</p><p>

“Relax!” he insisted. “They don’t have weapons that’re gonna be accurate over a certain distance.” His voice smoothed out as he realised he had finally climbed that high. “They didn’t shell out for decent guns, and they don’t pay their guards—and cleaners!—slag. With my amazing flying—did you <em>see that</em>, by the way?—there’s no way they're going to catch us.”</p><p>

Once he was safely out of range, he could admit that there was a little something to the thrill of escape—mostly that he’d <em>done it</em> and come out unscathed! Without that panic, although he was still recovering, the rush of the wind and the effortless growl of his engines reasserted themselves as sensations that were, as always, a pleasure.</p><p>

And it wouldn’t hurt for Perceptor to <em>acknowledge how cool he’d been.</em></p><p>

He felt so strange now, though, giddy, like his processor was full of helium, ready to float away. Panicking had probably, he figured vaguely, affected his processor and fuel efficiency.</p><p>

“Yes,” Perceptor said sharply, cutting into what was sure to have been a very educational commentary on either weapons or company payroll (Brainstorm was leaning towards the guns, if only because he liked them a lot more), with a tone of some impatience, which, uh, <em>rude</em>. Was he always this stiff and disobliging to mechanisms who helped him out? No wonder they had been keeping him in a box. “But your instruments indicate you are seriously injured.”</p><p>

“I’m what,” said Brainstorm. </p><p>Then he felt it.</p><p>

The floaty giddiness morphed with an awful, staggering rush. Brainstorm flew face-first into a wall of dizziness that overcame him completely.</p><p>

For a half-second he was blind, sensors all re-calibrating, and he heard Perceptor yelp as he abruptly lost altitude when his nose cone dipped— </p><p>

“It’s fine! We’re fine! It’s all fine!” he cried, compensating with speed, but he was running down on fuel awfully fast, weirdly fast, even for such a gross take off, and he kept trying to find why, but flying actually did require some of his attention, okay, and his diagnostics weren’t completely readable. </p><p>

Possibly Perceptor had a better view of what was going on right now, with access to all the internal instruments. </p><p>

He was saying something from inside Brainstorm’s cockpit, but Brainstorm couldn’t focus on it. He was at sixty two per cent fuel capacity, and then his systems blinked and he was at forty eight, which meant the fifties had just slagging—gone? Somewhere?</p><p>

Re-calibration finished. His sensory network lit up. A burning pain made itself known. Brainstorm felt, more than heard, his engines change pitch to a thoroughly pathetic whine. He wobbled in the air. </p><p>

“So,” he said to Perceptor, clearing his comm manually, and in the tone of one who was definitely panicking, “don’t panic, but actually I may have been shot.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Brainstorm: he gave me... a nickname... an <em>endearment</em>... aw... 🥺<br/>Perceptor: this is a strange name, but it's how he introduced himself.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Brainstorm has had better days. But it's not clear if Perceptor has.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They landed in the clearest space Brainstorm could find on short notice: an abandoned lot behind a derelict shopping centre. The building was wide and tall with its black windows staring out, and nothing moved insides. The lot behind it was much smaller—most of the vehicles arriving at the shopping centre, after all, had been expected to continue on inside to do their shopping. The air was relatively still, which was a boon, but the ground here was pitted duracrete, bathed in the flickering glow of old lights on tall poles, and not an ideal surface for his landing gear.</p><p>Brainstorm knew intellectually that this was a controlled emergency landing, not a crash. He knew how to make a controlled emergency landing—he’d come online with that knowledge already in his processor, leaking straight up from his spark through a network of sentio metallico that connected the two. Some knowledge was simply spark coded, and his came from the only spark that had successfully bonded to his own cold-constructed jet frame.</p><p>That he already had the knowledge was not comforting: Brainstorm loved the sky, but he was not a trick flyer. He had never once made an emergency landing before, controlled or otherwise.</p><p>He didn’t have to be graceful, he thought as he frantically wheeled towards the flat-ish space. He just had to get them on the ground in one piece. Inside his cockpit, Perceptor was flexing his fingers on the sides of his seat, and his hands were so strong that even through the panic Brainstorm could feel his components throb in protest.</p><p>They did land safely—of course they did, he <em>was</em> a genius—but his memory files of the event were corrupted, and later all he could recall was an overwhelming, thunderous fear and flashing warnings and the whine of protesting metal. Hazily he knew he had babbled the whole way through, voicing his every thought and sub-process aloud—which didn’t even embarrass him until much, much later.</p><p>The <em>thump</em> of landing—unevenly, listing to one side on the unreliable ground—jarred things in Brainstorm that he’d never felt jarred before. Inside, Perceptor jolted in his seat too.</p><p>Brainstorm opened his canopy and exposed the cockpit for just long enough for his passenger to heave himself out. Perceptor's feet thudded heavily on the duracrete, but he stood under his own power.</p><p>Having ejected him, Brainstorm paid him no attention, already thinking about himself again. There was a cleaning cloth in his subspace, at least one of them—he kept collecting them while testing the Disinfectotron2000…</p><p>The transformation to root mode made a series of frankly unsettling cracks and metallic shrieks, and his damaged wing flared into such a bright pain that his sensory suite glitched out while trying to process the data—his vision dissolved to white, and for a second he didn’t know quite where he was in space or time.</p><p>“Hahhh?” he said, and then, a short <em>beep</em>? in binary, like a tiny confused sparkling. Then sense returned in a rush. “Ow, ow, ow." With the cleaning cloth clutched in one shaky hand, Brainstorm twisted around to look at his wing.</p><p>There was a <em>hole</em> right through the limb, and a bright pink wash of energon smeared right across its cracked plane.</p><p>He stared at it for a slow second. He had never been injured so severely before—well, he had, but the time he blew himself up didn’t count, exactly, because the university had called a medic and by the time they’d rebooted his primary processor he’d been back in one piece.</p><p>A dark hand snatched the cloth from his slack fingers.</p><p>“You must apply adequate pressure immediately—” Perceptor took hold of the wing closer to the massively reinforced joint where it attached. He had a grip like titanium. He shoved the cloth none-too-gently <em>into</em> the leaking hole.</p><p>He was still talking, but Brainstorm drowned him out with a squeal that ended gasping. His vents yawned and his fans shrieked. He reeled with it.</p><p>When the echoing noise died down, Perceptor eyed him. Brainstorm felt this was a distinctly judgemental eyeing.</p><p>Gently, he peeled Brainstorm’s hand away from where it was clutching at the teal plating of his wrist. His optics blinked rapidly when Brainstorm’s fingers, without much input from his conscious processor, took the opportunity to clutch at his hand instead. Then he didn't want to let go, feeling like in some way losing that touch would set him completely adrift, so he wound his fingers through Perceptor's and clung harder.</p><p>There was silence for a beat. Brainstorm flicked his optics off and on rapidly, trying to reset them even while his sensory suite complained. Perceptor was very still. He looked at their joined hands. His face was unreadable in the flickering lights of the car park.</p><p>“Ah,” he said, as though he had just discovered something new and puzzling.</p><p>There was a second where all Brainstorm could perceive was the expression on his face: intent, with a bright, clear attention in his gaze, and yet no discernible feeling. His fuel pump thumped. His spark spun once. And then he said, “Hey, <em>ow</em>.”</p><p>At this, the light of Perceptor’s optics lifted to meet his once more.</p><p>“It is not a difficult injury to manage. As long as there is pressure on it, and you do not undertake more strenuous activity, your nanites will have time to close the fuel lines and prevent significant damage from fuel loss.” He paused, and Brainstorm felt his field flex against his own—he hadn’t even known he was projecting so hard, until then. In response to whatever he could feel, Perceptor added, apparently as an afterthought, “Although I am sure it’s painful.”</p><p>Brainstorm’s good wing twitched.</p><p>Internally, he thought, <em>What the pit do you know about it?</em> And then, remembering all the weld marks and vivisections, <em>Not everyone gets cut open every week!</em></p><p>Obviously, this was terribly insensitive, so when Brainstorm actually used his vocaliser, what he said was: “What the pit do you know about it?” And, in a high and aggrieved voice, “Excuse <em>me</em>, but not everyone gets cut open every week!”</p><p>...in Brainstorm’s defence, he was in quite a lot of pain.</p><p>Perceptor’s over-bright optics remained fixed on his for a long and unsympathetic second. Then very calmly but with a great deal of strength, he peeled Brainstorm’s clutching fingers away from his own hand, leaving his hand grasping at nothing in the cool air. “That statement answers your query. Since I have a great deal of experience with injury, you may accept my expertise on the matter.”</p><p>Brainstorm’s vents couldn’t open any wider, but his fans kicked up just enough to sigh irritably out through them.</p><p>“Furthermore, I don’t believe it's necessary to yell,” Perceptor added.</p><p>Perceptor didn’t even seem offended, just kind of… cold. Which felt worse, actually. Slag. Brainstorm clenched his fist in the air between them. Whatever this feeling was, it was happening to him without his consent and he didn’t like it. And he was also in pain, and tired, and scared, and he wanted—he wanted a lot of things. But among them, he wanted Perceptor to <em>like</em> him, to be <em>impressed</em> with him, to be <em>nice</em> to him.</p><p>As usual, a process ran to assess how much he could really get away with here—could they pretend he hadn't said any of that? Could he make it into a joke about his ego? Would Perceptor even understand such a joke?</p><p>He shut the process off deliberately. There was an error. He dumped it.</p><p>“Sorry,” he said through his clenched jaw. The apology was almost physically painful.</p><p>Perceptor looked at him. “For what?”</p><p>…of course. Perceptor <em>would</em> be one of those, wouldn’t he.</p><p>Brainstorm held onto his good will by his teeth. “I shouldn’t have said that. That was kind of mean. It, uh, hurts a lot.” It was the best apology he was getting.</p><p>Perceptor’s face was curiously blank, and Brainstorm very nearly began to regret the enormous and horrible vulnerability of apologising at all.</p><p>But then Perceptor said, haltingly, “You’re… forgiven,” in the most stilted way, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say.</p><p>Brainstorm’s fuel tank did an acrobatic, unpleasant flop low in his abdominal cavity, behind his cockpit. With a lightning flash of insight, he realised that Perceptor <em>was</em> unsure of what to say, because he’d simply never had anyone apologise before. Not even for knocking a wing accidentally, or when getting out of the way in a corridor, or—</p><p>Suddenly he was more glad he’d apologised than he had ever been before.</p><p>It was a strange, fierce, overwhelming feeling, and Brainstorm was already in pain and now his <em>emotional co-processor</em> was heating up alarmingly fast. Perceptor was looking at him with the beginnings of alarm and Brainstorm had no idea what was projected in his field.</p><p>“I am, though,” he blurted. “Uh. Sorry, I mean. And also, thank you. For… with the rag. I could have done it myself,” he couldn’t help but insist, “but you did it anyway so… thanks.”</p><p>Perceptor’s optics blinked once, slowly. Brainstorm could almost taste his bewilderment.</p><p>“Yes. Well,” he began, with a staticky noise—but Brainstorm did not get to find out what would follow 'well', because the faint sound of sirens became apparent in the distance.</p><p>The pair both swivelled their heads, precise and certain as weather vanes responding to wind, to look in the direction of the sound.</p><p><em>Nooo</em>, thought Brainstorm, who wanted nothing quite so much as he wanted to sit down and feel sorry for himself for about a week.</p><p>He looked over at Perceptor. Amid hundreds of pages of content about his physical body, from his multiple fuel pumps to his weird and nightmarish interfacing equipment, there had been no useful notes on the ability of the creature to sense things—but he seemed to have heard the sirens at the same time as Brainstorm.</p><p>“I don’t suppose you can tell how far away that is,” Brainstorm wondered, without much thought of getting a positive response.</p><p>Perceptor frowned at him. “Perhaps if we knew the fundamental frequency and amplitude of the harmonics,” he said slowly, “but I think it is best we assume any siren we can hear is too close—and you haven't even proposed a metric for determining a course of action with regard to the closeness of the noise. In fact,” he added, "this whole endeavour has been poorly executed."</p><p>“Well, excuse <em>me</em>,” muttered Brainstorm. “I may be a genius, but that doesn't make me an expert in, in—<em>laboratory heists</em>.”</p><p>“I didn’t suggest either of those things about you," Perceptor said. "There is no point in calculating the distance of the sirens if it won’t affect our course of action.”</p><p>Fine. That was true. And the sirens were closer by the second.</p><p>Brainstorm’s wings tried to twitch in completely understandable agitation, but the injured one flared brightly, a supernova of pain that made his sensory suite stutter.</p><p>“Come on,” said Perceptor shortly. “Neither of us is in ideal functioning condition at present. We should take shelter in the building.”</p><p>By ‘take shelter’ Brainstorm assumed that Perceptor meant they’d be hiding like frightened retrorats aboard an angry shuttle, but the sirens were louder and louder. He didn’t want to criticise Perceptor’s idea without an answering brilliant one of his own, and his whole frame ached.</p><p>“Fine,” he agreed, not happily.</p><p>Perceptor was right in assessing the degree of function they shared between the two of them, anyway. The welds up and down his front were obviously only a day or two old and not done by a real medic. He stood without difficulty, but there was some kind of weakness when he tried to put all of his weight upon one foot or the other. He had to lean heavily upon Brainstorm to travel more than a few steps.</p><p>Microscopes, in Brainstorm’s admittedly (unfortunately) limited experience, were not that heavy—they didn’t have much extra metal folded away, or heavy tyres, or propulsion engines or anything. Perceptor had more than the usual hardware, but he wasn’t so much heavier for all that. Brainstorm had the fleeting thought that it might have been convenient if he could still fit in his cockpit in root mode, but that was both silly and impossible.</p><p>“I <em>am</em> a genius, you know,” he said belatedly, as they trudged into the shadows of the derelict shopping centre. The building was tall and there was light flickering from someone’s once-bright neon sign on the inside, out through the heavy-looking clear doors.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I said, I <em>am</em> a geni—”</p><p>“I heard you. My question was intended to express confusion. It wasn't a cue to repeat yourself. Is this... relevant? Presently?”</p><p>It wasn't.</p><p>“…yes,” mumbled Brainstorm.</p><p>“…Is this locked?” Perceptor asked, in the tone of one gratefully anticipating a subject change.</p><p>Brainstorm peered into the darkened interior of the building. Close up, he could see that there was a dull greenish hint of neon flickering deep inside. Probably an old sign. He then looked over the dimly-glowing, cracked access panel and its keypad.</p><p>“Looks like it.” He wiggled Perceptor’s arm off his shoulder and pulled a data cable from his subspace. He flicked its connector in Perceptor’s direction pointedly.</p><p>“Tell me again how ‘irrelevant’ my genius is in five minutes,” he quipped.</p><p>Perceptor, carefully taking all his weight on his own feet again, transferred it by leaning on the wall. He looked back at Brainstorm, faintly exhausted around the edges.</p><p>“Please don’t trigger an alarm.”</p><p>Even as Brainstorm made an offended noise with his engine, he kind of missed the sweet soft buzz of Perceptor’s EM field travelling right through their plating where it touched. Without being in contact, it felt dulled.</p><p><em>If you keep this up, even the monster’s going to think you’re needy and pathetic</em>, a tiny voice commentated deep in his processor. He ignored that. Who didn't have rude internal commentary to keep them company sometimes? He focused on the access panel. </p><p>Brainstorm managed to get through the old security system in under three minutes. The doors creaked open with the protesting grind of old and rusty metal. He wrapped his arm once again around Perceptor’s waist and braced him up to get them in over the threshold.</p><p>He was inside their laughably simple security system then, so even after he disconnected his cable and shoved it back into his subspace, the connection he’d established was still available to him.</p><p>The doors squealed shut behind them, leaving them inside the echoing, faintly flickering dark.</p><p>“Does plugging it directly into your processors not present a risk? Many security systems have defences in the event that someone might attempt to force them with a code picker.”</p><p>Brainstorm made a face, but it was hidden by his blast mask. Could Perceptor not just accept him being cool for ten minutes without all these tiresome questions and criticisms?</p><p>“Sure,” he said, “if you’re an amateur who doesn’t know what you’re doing.”</p><p>“You’re a professional then? A professional thief?” Perceptor sounded a little bit like he’d be unhappy if this turned out to be true. And also—strained. His voice was seeing some interference from other systems demanding more power.</p><p>“No,” said Brainstorm, “Don’t worry, you’re the only mysterious laboratory specimen I’ve stolen recently—”</p><p>“I wasn't worried.” He edged closer and leaned heavily on Brainstorm again, pressing their plating together. His cool, raw-feeling EM field was a knot of anxiety and weariness.</p><p>“—Actually, I’m a professional <em>genius</em>,” Brainstorm informed him, talking blithely over any unnecessary commentary Perceptor might have been making.</p><p>“I don’t believe that’s a real job,” said Perceptor after what sounded like a moment of serious consideration.</p><p>Brainstorm could feel his light, internal mechanical processes making his plating vibrate gently. He tightened his grasp around his side and began to search the building blueprints for somewhere to settle in for a while.</p><p>“I’m a temporal engineer by <em>trade</em>,” he said, although privately he felt that relegating anyone to a ‘trade’ was confined and narrow thinking. “There’s a fuel stop up here, they’ll have seats.”</p><p>“Like a chronosmith?” At least he sounded more interested than condescending.</p><p>“No, it’s—uh, okay, up we go—” Perceptor grunted out a little blat of static as he tried to make it up the stairs, and Brainstorm ended up bracing against most of his weight for the better part of that operation. “No. Chronosmiths, they make devices that <em>measure</em> time. Temporal engineering is applied physics that <em>alters</em> time.”</p><p>Perceptor made a very dubious noise indeed. "If such a trade exists, I should think its dangers would far outweigh any benefits."</p><p>"You're not alone in that." Brainstorm huffed. He paused, listening for the sounds of sirens. They'd been muffled a little by going inside, but there was no mistaking their wail approaching. "Think we can rest here for a while?"</p><p>The space at the top of their ascent was dark, filled with seating of different heights, uniform, with cheap padding and feet bolted into the floors. It wasn't very clean. There was a smell in the air like it hadn't seen light in years, and like all the vile little things that bred in dark places had made their nests there. Lovely.</p><p>"Yes," said Perceptor anyway, wearily. "I expect we'll have to."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>feel free to drop me a comment if you liked something in particular! otherwise have a good night :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Brainstorm hunched in and leaned down to help Perceptor lower himself onto one of the long benches. Its synthetic padding sighed and creaked as it took his weight.</p>
<p>

Perceptor let his arm slide away from Brainstorm’s plating with the soft ringing sigh of metal on metal. His dark fingers pressed into the cushion at his sides, where they became indistinguishable in the dimness. </p>
<p>

“Thank you,” he said stiffly, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to say it. Or, Brainstorm allowed privately, feeling very charitable, perhaps like he was distracted by pain and discomfort. </p>
<p>

“No problem,” Brainstorm said breezily. Then he, too, sat down on a stool. There was nothing wrong with his thrusters, but somehow it was a relief to take the weight off them. He felt strangely exhausted. </p>
<p>

This area of the shopping centre was entirely dedicated to the fuelstop. The flickering neon lights were down the ramp somewhere and didn’t reach this high up, so other than a tiny slightly-less-dim patch of ceiling above the stairs and ramp, all the lighting was from the windows and from their own frames. Perceptor’s bright blue optics were making the most significant contribution there, casting a gentle and dim wash of blue over everything. Even the dull glow of pink from Brainstorms’ leaking energon wasn’t quite that bright. </p>
<p>

The tall silhouettes of multilevel furnishings streamed away from their bodies, like a distorted corona for the dim, pale body-light.</p>
<p>

Outside, the sirens were muffled, but the pair could still hear them. </p>
<p>

Perching on the stool gave Brainstorm’s frame the opportunity to relax and change his centre of balance; he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and let the weight of his primary wings sag behind him. </p>
<p>

He usually didn’t even notice the weight of them on the joints there—they were naturally thick and sturdy, and had been built up year on year by nanites whose sole purpose it was to convert the minerals and energon in his diet to new metals and silicones, responsive to his frame’s use and health. But the shot that had blown a hole right through one of them had left the wing misaligned. The joint was screaming under strain. </p>
<p>

Gingerly, he reached around to inspect it. Maybe it had stopped leaking fuel by now? His internal reports from the area were gibberish. </p>
<p>

“Don’t,” said Perceptor sharply. “Don’t agitate it. You will only make it worse.”</p>
<p>

Brainstorm huffed out through his vents. As if Perceptor should tell him what to do with his own wings! …But he let his hand drop again. His wings sank low upon his back and even the secondary ones drooped. </p>
<p>

For a long moment there was only the sound of humming machinery and distant sirens. </p>
<p>

“Well, alright,” Brainstorm said at length. “I’ll admit, I didn’t plan very far past my dashing rescue, but—”</p>
<p>

But unfortunately they would have his employment records and therefore know where his cramped rental apartment was located, so Brainstorm had nowhere in mind to take them. </p>
<p>

Perceptor was looking at Brainstorm like he was listening closely, focused and attentive. </p>
<p>

“—but I can’t, er, be expected to do everything here, okay?”</p>
<p>

There was a humming moment of silence while Perceptor considered that. </p>
<p>

After about two seconds, Brainstorm got distracted. He squinted into the dark.</p>
<p>Was it just him, or were those sirens getting further away? Had the facility even called law enforcement?</p>
<p>

Very seriously, having allowed himself time to contemplate what Brainstorm had told him, Perceptor said, “I suppose, as ill-thought out and poorly executed as this was, it was a bit dashing."</p>
<p>After a confused moment, Brainstorm realised that he wasn't taking the slag or anything--Perceptor was <em>completely serious</em>.</p><p>

Brainstorm’s wings fluttered, sharp, shameless, and so quick and unconscious that it took him a second to realise it physically hurt. He swayed dangerously on his perch.</p>
<p>

He cleared his voice with a click and a crackle. “Well, ah, you know, all in a day’s <em>dazzling heroics</em> for Brai—”</p>
<p>

“Let’s not get carried away,” Perceptor interrupted. </p>
<p>His intention was perhaps to be deflating, but Brainstorm had been called <em>dashing</em> by somebody other than himself for once and his ego was, just presently, bullet-proof. His wings spread wide all on their own and it didn’t even hurt that much. </p>
<p>

“What do you th—” Brainstorm stopped immediately at the sound of something clattering in the building below them. </p>
<p>

The sound carried up the stairway and the ramp right onto their level. </p>
<p>

Across from him, Perceptor sat up straight and then went so still he could have been part of the furniture. Even the hum of his insides fell silent. His optics, if anything, brightened further. </p>
<p>

Something low in Brainstorm’s fuel tank clicked, quiet as a whisper. He stared right into Perceptor’s glowing optics. His pump thumped softly. </p>
<p>

They sat like that in silence for a very long moment. </p>
<p>Brainstorm’s chemoreceptors picked up, oddly, the heavy scent of his own injury. Maybe it was nervousness, but all he could smell seemed to be fresh-spilled energon. He pulled a face, hidden behind his blast mask. Gross.</p>
<p>

“Subject zero two?” called a voice. </p>
<p>

It was only distantly familiar to Brainstorm, something that pinged a match in his memory files but which he’d heard infrequently and quickly forgotten.</p>
<p>

Perceptor’s frame remained utterly still. He did not even blink his optics. </p>
<p>

Belatedly, Brainstorm remembered he could access the building’s security systems, which included not just the locks and the blueprints but also the cameras. Most of them had been cheap when they’d been purchased, and were no longer recording at all. But there were a few that he could still nudge on, including several outside the building. </p>
<p>

He skimmed their feeds, staring sightlessly at Perceptor while he crunched through each angle and image. </p>
<p>

It was the microscope from the laboratory. Blue paint, green optics. Cute. The technician.</p>
<p>
“He’s alone,” he murmured to Perceptor.</p>
<p>

His optics moved to Brainstorm, but he was silent and his face revealed nothing. </p>
<p>

“Come on, zero two. I know you’ve got to be in here somewhere. You weren’t getting any further in your state.” A pause. “We’re not mad,” he added, gentler, just loud enough to carry. His footsteps clattered. “Scattergraph knows you were stolen, he’s not upset with you.”</p>
<p>

As he came closer and closer, Brainstorm realised that the smell he’d mistaken for coming from his <em>own</em> injury was too strong after all—that fresh energon reek was getting stronger as the lab tech got closer.</p>
<p>

“Heh, you can smell it, right? I know how hungry you get when you’re healing.”</p>
<p>

Trying to coax him out with food, Brainstorm realised. Like a turbohound. Huh. </p>
<p>

Nervously, he glanced at Perceptor.</p>
<p>

“Alone?” Perceptor said, barely louder than his vents. “You’re certain?”</p>
<p>

Brainstorm nodded.</p>
<p>

“Come on,” up drifted the voice, “one thin-plated jet can’t have filled you up that full.”</p>
<p>

<em>One jet?</em> Did he mean <em>him</em>? Brainstorm jerked in his seat. In doing so, his leg clattered against the bolted-in leg of the stool. It wasn’t quiet.</p>
<p>

Wait, <em>thin-plated?</em> Rude. Just because he wasn’t a military model…</p>
<p>

Perceptor looked at him again, unreadable.</p>
<p>

He could hear the tech change directions. Dammit.</p>
<p>

Brainstorm knew his optics were the only thing that could be seen behind his mask but he still pulled a face. </p>
<p>

Perceptor’s field shifted incomprehensibly in response, and he gingerly levered himself back up to his feet, even as the sounds of the technician who had followed them came steadily closer. </p>
<p>

He gestured for Brainstorm to stay put and then with careful, if wobbling steps, went to the top of the stairs and disappeared—apparently effortlessly—into the shadows beside them. Brainstorm twisted on his stool to follow his movements. He even managed somehow to dull his optics. The light of a vehicle passing on the streets below revealed a strip of his chest, colourless in the dimness, but otherwise he was virtually invisible. </p>
<p>

For a moment, Brainstorm felt the fear that he was leaving entirely, but he knew it to be irrational when he thought about it. </p>
<p>

Perceptor’s silence and stillness contrasted sharply with the footfalls of the mech on the floor below. Even injured, he was able to move more quietly than Brainstorm’s resting ventilations. This had not been in any notes—perhaps because of the infrequency with which he’d been allowed out of his enclosure, the staff hadn’t documented that his systems could run so silent. </p>
<p>

The tiny clatter Brainstorm had made brought the technician right to them, of course. The quality of the steps he could hear changed as he started up the stairs, and as he came closer there was also an odd scraping and a thump on every odd step that accompanied them. </p>
<p>

At first all Brainstorm saw were his optics—that uncommon shade of green, dimly back-lit in the dark. As he climbed higher, though, Brainstorm could make out the shape of something dangling from one of his hands, which had to be the source of the scraping noise. It must have been his bait, he supposed, for it reeked of spilt energon. </p>
<p>

Brainstorm squinted, optics zooming in with a soft whirr only he could hear. </p>
<p>

From how he carried it, it seemed… heavy?</p>
<p>

He ascended the full height of the stairs at last, looking around left and right, and Brainstorm finally recognised it. The smell, the weight, and the heft of the thing all coalesced into a moment of jarring familiarity: it was the night guard from the facility. The one whose arm Perceptor had torn so effortlessly free. </p>
<p>

It was no wonder it took him a moment. It was naturally harder to recognise someone once they were grey and missing all their limbs and kibble, of course. </p>
<p>

Braistorm’s fuel tank executed an acrobatic leap from his middle up to somewhere near his vocaliser.</p>
<p>

“You know…” he said, drawing the technician’s attention. This had the lucky side effect of distracting him from any effort he might have made to look for Perceptor, but Brainstorm wasn’t thinking that clearly about it at the moment he spoke. </p>
<p>

The technician flinched and whirled around to face Brainstorm. His blue plating was leeched of all colour by the dimness of the light. Here in the lowest light, they were all just painted shades of grey. </p>
<p>

“… A missing arm isn’t a fatal injury, pretty sure.”</p>
<p>

He couldn’t seem to take his optics away from the guard’s frame for long. His limbs ad kibble had probably been removed to ensure he contained as much juicy sentio metallico—contained in the head and around the spark chamber in greater quantities then elsewhere—for a minimum of weight. A little microscope wasn’t exactly a heavy freight vehicle. </p>
<p>

“<em>You</em>,” said the technician venomously. </p>
<p>

Brainstorm flared his wings. He didn’t like confrontation… but he did love attention. </p>
<p>

“Me!” he said cheerfully, rallying. He dragged his optics from the guard and up to the microscope’s face again at last. “You’ll forgive me if I’ve completely forgotten your name. When I was accessing your entire security system, I was only really downloading important stuff for keeps.”</p>
<p>

This was a lie. Brainstorm hadn’t known his name to start with. </p>
<p>

The tech ignored it anyway. </p>
<p>

“Where is it? You haven’t lost it, have you?” He sounded genuinely concerned. Was he worried that Perceptor might be out on an indiscriminate killing spree or something? Or just concerned about losing his job? Brainstorm couldn’t tell. </p>
<p>

Perhaps two body lengths behind the technician, Perceptor’s optics grew marginally brighter, a cold blue glow in the dark. His silhouette moved in absolute silence.</p>
<p>

“No,” Brainstorm said slowly, “he’s not lost.” He nodded to the guard. “What happened to him?” </p>
<p>

“I’m surprised you still have all your pieces,” said the tech without answering Brainstorm’s question. “It might look cute and harmless—especially since it stole my shape—but I promise that’s not usually what happens when it slips its cage.”</p>
<p>

The comment seemed a little bitter. </p>
<p>

Brainstorm understood that his job right now was to distract him, keep him talking. “So? What happened? Did Perceptor eat a friend of yours?”</p>
<p>

Behind him, Perceptor was coming closer, ever so carefully, one silent, wobbly foot at a time. His optics brightened with every step, as he came closer and closer to losing control of those basic subroutines.</p>
<p>

“’Perceptor’. You know it made that up by itself, don’t you?”</p>
<p>

Only forged mechanisms had caretakers to lovingly pick out a name for them, so this was not the scandalous revelation that he perhaps assumed. Brainstorm’s original designation was 63N17U5. Very classy. But the bias was common in the academies, and Brainstorm had smiled guilelessly through worse. </p>
<p>

He didn’t have to smile through it now, though. “You don’t say.”  </p>
<p>

Because he was watching so intently, Brainstorm saw the <em>exact</em> moment the technician noticed his own shadow bleeding out of the darkness—washed softly in the eerie blue light of Perceptor’s optics.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It occurred to Brainstorm for about half a second that <em>he</em> could have been the one reaching erroneous conclusions, but his analysis threw that out as being simply—spectacularly unlikely!</p><p>(Oh, Brainstorm.)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>note: ao3 user <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch">neveralarch</a> was kind enough to come up with the name 'Micronix' for my use here.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
The technician’s field flared with pure, mortal dread in the split second before Perceptor put his hand on the cabling of his neck. It was a potent blast, a slap to any receptive field nearby. Brainstorm flinched.
</p><p>
He dropped what remained of the night guard.
</p><p>
It hit the floor with a thump that seemed deafening in the relative quiet of the abandoned complex. Brainstorm saw the way Perceptor’s optics followed the greyed body, but his hands were steady. 
</p><p>
“Subject zero two,” said the blue microscope nervously. 
</p><p>
“My name is Perceptor,” said Perceptor in the same precise and mild voice he’d used to introduce himself to Brainstorm. “As you know, Micronix.”
</p><p>
That was… <em>less</em> mild. Right.
</p><p>
“Perceptor, then. We could, er, get your records changed,” Micronix said. His voice was tight.
</p><p>
“Interesting.” Perceptor did not say it as though it was interesting. “I was previously under the impression that this exceeded your authority, Micronix. Congratulations on your promotion.”
</p><p>
Perceptor’s fingers were firm but gentle and very still on the delicate components of Micronix’s neck. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm could just imagine how they felt—but he’d also seen, in person, Perceptor rip a mech’s arm clean off without even standing up. He found his own gaze glued to Perceptor’s dark hands, just as precise as his voice. 
</p><p>
“Well—well, under the circumstances,” Micronix was saying quickly, “I am certain—”
</p><p>
“Yes.” Perceptor cut him off. He cut his voice off, too, physically, with a shift of his fingers over the Micronix’s vocaliser, so that his mouth moved but the sound was nothing but soft, confused static. His hand barely moved, but the plating of the technician’s neck gave a short, protesting creak. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to. 
</p><p>
“Yes, Scattergraph would surely allow the concession under the circumstances, by which you must mean my present state of freedom. Are those the circumstances to which you refer, Micronix?”
</p><p>
There was a crackle. Micronix’s face—a pretty face; microscopes always slagging were, weren’t they—twisted as the pressure released and the obstructed sensors in his throat must have fired all at once. 
</p><p>
“Of course that’s what I mean, yes, sub—er, Perceptor. Come on, you’re not stupid. <em>I</em> know you’re not stupid. There’s nothing out here for you. You might not have eaten this idiot, but you’ll get hungry eventually—and then what? You’ll kill a bunch of people and get blown up by the enforcers? You run away? Forever? You’re not—<em>meant</em> for freedom,” he said, warming to the topic. “There’s no reasonable pathway open to you. Just like a courier jet isn’t meant for scientific research. It’s just—it’s just how function works.”
</p><p>
“You’re correct,” said Perceptor, which made Brainstorm’s wing twitch painfully when his reality matrix threw up an error for a moment. “I am <em>not</em> stupid.”
</p><p>
This comment resolved the error in Brainstorm's processes, but from the expression on Micronix’s face, it was not the response he’d hoped for. 
</p><p>
“Tell me. Do you think Scattergraph’s behavioural models adequately account for what may occur, in the event that his subject learns that the only circumstances under which it can expect ‘concessions’ from laboratory staff are precipitated by violence?”
</p><p>
“Ah,” said Micronix, glancing at the mangled body of the guard on the floor. “Perhaps—should you return with me with no further argument, a case can be made—”
</p><p>
“Are you saying you’re going to listen to his arguments more if he doesn’t argue anymore?” Brainstorm interrupted. Despite the discomfort and the frankly surreal situation he was in, he couldn’t help grinning. 
</p><p>
Micronix shot him an ugly look. “Really, Perceptor? Seriously? You think <em>this guy’s</em> going to keep you any better than we do?” he demanded. “He got thrown out of his own research program! He only got a job <em>as a cleaner</em> because Gaslight was <em>sorry</em> for him!” 
</p><p>
Brainstorm scowled fiercely. He really hadn’t needed Perceptor to know that. 
</p><p>
It might have been true—he wasn’t privy to the director’s reasoning for hiring him, obviously, but it wasn't like his name was, ah, <em>unknown</em>, in the more theoretical and niche scientific circles. But it <em>wasn’t</em> well known in Micronix’s—which meant that while Brainstorm had been breaking into files and learning more about the fascinating metallico vorax, Micronix had been doing a little research of his own. 
</p><p>
Even as he twitched his good wing in irritation and offence, Brainstorm lifted his chin and said, as obnoxiously as he could manage (which was very obnoxious): “I had no idea you were a <em>fan</em>! And here I didn’t even know your name!” 
</p><p>
Perceptor was almost exactly the same height as Micronix, and he was just a shadow and a pair of blowing blue optics besides, so Brainstorm couldn’t actually see what he thought about the revelation that Brainstorm had been expelled. 
</p><p>
“We’re getting a little side-tracked,” he went on breezily, keen to change that subject. “Did they send you alone because they’re still mad about the alt-mode thing?” he wondered aloud, checking the security feeds—the few he could access—again. There really was no sign of movement. 
</p><p>
“What makes you think I’m alone?” Micronix asked, instead of answering properly. 
</p><p>
“Don’t be tedious.” Brainstorm sighed loudly through his vents and raised his optics to the ceiling. “I’m smarter than you. I’m smarter than you’ve ever even <em>fantasised about</em>. And I’m already six steps ahead of you. You <em>are</em> alone. Nobody even called the enforcers.”
</p><p>
He said it with supreme confidence: on this, he knew he was right. If Micronix was here, they hadn’t called the enforcers. 
</p><p>
Micronix was silent, and Brainstorm took the opportunity to explain his clever little deduction—he so rarely had a receptive audience. Not that Micronix was receptive. 
</p><p>
…Perceptor was, maybe. Brainstorm flared his wings to show them to best advantage, even though it wouldn’t do him any good in the dark.
</p><p>
“The enforcers would have had to be informed about Perceptor, had you actually called them. But you didn't. You couldn’t have sent them in blind to apprehend someone who looks like a regular mechanism. You’d have to tell them he isn’t exactly what he looks like—and then they’d ask a lot of questions, and you’d lose your subject anyway. You don't want that, do you? And so, instead, here you are, Micronix, skulking around with freshly-murdered guards, trying to bargain him back into a cage.”
</p><p>
He spread his hands: a magician presenting his latest trick. His smug little smile was not visible behind the mask, but it was sure as slag projected in his field. 
</p><p>
Perceptor’s shape shifted quietly in the dimness. Brainstorm could hear the soft tell-tale hiss of his fans click on. Probably he was either uncomfortable from the strain of injury or growing impatient and hungry and warm, and either of those meant that they had to wrap this nonsense up fast. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm stood up, clenching his mouth behind his mask at how changing his weight distribution tugged at his wing. They had to get moving.
</p><p>
“I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said into the stubborn silence that ensued. Micronix, apparently, was either struck dumb by his sheer brilliance (always possible), or he just wasn’t going to confirm or deny. “You’re going to take us to the carrier you drove here and unlock it for us, and maybe we’ll consider letting you leave in one piece.”
</p><p>
Brainstorm knew himself to be bluffing—he wasn’t even sure he had the tanks for hurting someone really directly. But Micronix didn’t know that. 
</p><p>
He glared, stiff and scared. It was a shame, because he was cute, and Brainstorm did not aspire to tormenting—well, anyone, really, but especially not cute microscopes. Still, hopefully they could take the carrier and leave him behind only a little the worse for wear… 
</p><p>
“And pick that up,” Brainstorm said, already trying to calculate whether or not Perceptor would be able to make it the whole way on his own feet. “He’s already dead, so he might as well not go to <em>waste</em>.” 
</p><p>
Brainstorm knew the carrier wasn’t that far, in the scheme of things, but with Perceptor leaning heavily upon the very mechanism he was threatening to get them there, the distance felt interminable. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm followed the pair of them, keeping an anxious optic on Micronix as they made their slow way through the derelict shopping centre in the dim lights of their own frames. In his free processor space, though, he couldn’t help but run analysis on what had just transpired here—Micronix showing up with half a dead mech, as though he was trying to entice a cybercat. 
</p><p>
What had made them so certain that Perceptor could be food-motivated?
</p><p>
Was he usually?
</p><p>
In places there had been reference to him performing tasks for observation for the promise of food, but it hadn’t seemed that significant compared to the wealth of experiments and observations for which he’d been simply a passive subject for investigation.
</p><p>
Then, too, Micronix had clearly expected that Perceptor had already eaten Brainstorm—but to Brainstorm’s optic, he’d seemed no closer to turning on and eating him than any other mech. Even though there was undoubtedly sentio metallico in trace amounts in the energon leaking from his wing, he hadn’t seemed particularly interested. 
</p><p>
The laboratory had had years to study Perceptor. Why had they reached such erroneous conclusions? 
</p><p>
It occurred to Brainstorm for about half a second that <em>he</em> could have been the one reaching erroneous conclusions, but his analysis threw that out as being simply—spectacularly unlikely. No. It was certainly the research staff who had years of both experience with and access to Perceptor who were wrong about his typical behaviour. But <em>why</em> were they wrong?
</p><p>
The carrier was exactly as Brainstorm expected: one of the models from the basement car park, a vehicle large enough to carry even the biggest of research alts comfortably through the city, with a wide bay at the back and a roof that hinged right open. The seating could be manually transformed away, too—but the vehicle was slow and ugly, and it unsettled Brainstorm a little to get inside it when it was so plainly not alive. 
</p><p>
But he would have to, he supposed—feeling a little unsettled was preferable to whatever had happened to that guard. He already had the nagging feeling that if he allowed himself to be taken back to the research facility, he’d be on Perceptor’s menu whether either of them liked it or not.
</p><p>
Hmm. Yes. That. 
</p><p>
Micronix handed over the key pass to the carrier with only a little pressure. 
</p><p>
“You’re going to let me go, right?” 
</p><p>
Brainstorm ignored this. He slid back the door of the carrier with a long, loud grating noise and a heavy thump. 
</p><p>
“Give that here,” he demanded. The greyed body of the guard was gross, but he was already dead and presumably full of sentio metallico. Brainstorm heaved it into the back of the vehicle, grunting at the strain the movement placed on the joint of his wing.
</p><p>
“All right, let—” There was a crunch, not very loud, from right behind him. Brainstorm stopped mid-sentence. 
</p><p>
It sounded—Brainstorm wasn’t even sure <em>what</em> it sounded like, actually, but the very sound triggered a series of atavistic subroutines in his processor. 
</p><p>
The first was a weapons check and the last was one single-line imperative: <em><strong>run</strong></em>.
</p><p>
Brainstorm froze instead, stiffly arguing with the instinct that felt as though it had risen up from the darkest depths of his brain module. 
</p><p>
After a very still moment, he turned. 
</p><p>
Micronix’s optics were already dark. Perceptor’s blazed brightly as he simply ripped the other microscope’s helm clean away. Amid the thick cables of his neck, lines tore and sprayed fuel and wires sparked, casting little spots of brief, bright light upon the duracrete ground. 
</p><p>
“Oh, frag,” said Brainstorm blankly, unable to formulate new thoughts past the blaring alarms in his head. 
</p><p>
Perceptor leaned right past him to toss the helm—still leaking—into the back of the carrier. It clanked against the grey form already in there. Then he braced Micronix’s headless frame against the vehicle’s door and ripped open his chest plates like they were made of aluminium scrap.
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Brainstorm: could it be that I, who have spent less than a day in total with Perceptor, have less insight into his behaviour?<br/>Brainstorm: no, no, it is the research staff who are wrong<br/>Perceptor: *murders some guy then rips him open to eat his insides*<br/>Brainstorm: *surprised pikachu.jpg*</p><hr/><p>Um, anyway, I've typed this up and then only kind of skimmed it, because I want to curl up and <strike>expire</strike> sleep, so it's possible that I missed some typos.<br/>Thanks so much for your kind comments in the previous few chapters! If you liked something about this one feel free to tell me here also. If you want to chat in general you can find me at <a href="cardio-vore.tumblr.com/">cardio-vore.tumblr.com</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/fascination_ex">@fascination_ex</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Brainstorm… watched. There was nothing else to do. Intellectually—from a distant place—he reasoned that Micronix showing up at all might have left Perfecptor feeling threatened and that when he felt threatened perhaps he just—did as mechanimals did. </p><p>

But the sheer sudden explosive violence of it was shocking. 
</p><p>
Unbidden, the thought came to Brainstorm that Perceptor was really tremendously strong, and he wished he’d taken a better look at the case in which he’d been kept. He watched the cables flex between plates as Perceptor tore out several of the heavy duty fuel lines from Micronix’s chest. It was… a lot of power for his size. 
</p><p>
It occurred to him that they were out in the open. The lot might have been deserted, but anyone could come along at any time, or even just fly overhead… 
</p><p>
It also occurred to Brainstorm that he could climb in the carrier, turf the body parts out, close the door and leave Perceptor to his own monstrous devices—get the pit out of here and away from the clear danger he represented.
</p><p>
Once again he found himself assessing Perceptor’s capacity for reason and cooperation, his likelihood of attacking Brainstorm, and, most importantly, Brainstorm’s interest in him as a curiosity.
</p><p>
The inside of Perceptor’s mouth, when he opened it wide to—almost delicately—snap up the fuel lines, was coated in tiny villi. They were activated by the eating, peeling up from their flat planes on his tognue and the inside of his mouth and waving gently for every bite. The researchers thought they played a part in absorbing certain chemicals. 
</p><p>
“Just—bring that in here,” Brainstorm said abruptly. “We have to get out of the open.”
</p><p>
Perceptor’s optic, when he looked up, was lit brighter than Brainstorm had ever seen it. Was it that bright so he could see what he was doing when he was buried face-first in someone’s chest? It cast a blue light everywhere he looked. Brainstorm wasn’t sure what the feeling was when he met that bright fuel-spattered optical lens—he flinched and yanked his wings back, but some part of him was fascinated. 
</p><p>
“I mean,” he added quickly, “if you, uh, if you want to—” 
</p><p>
Perceptor licked his lips. The villi on his tongue were still erect, active. They waved like tiny stubby fingers. Brainstorm couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like, when he licked his mouth like that. 
</p><p>
“No,” Perceptor said, sounding just as soft and precise—mild as med-grade—as he ever did. “That is reasonable. I must apologise,” he added, even as he unceremoniously heaved Micronix’s body into the carrier. “He knew I’d be hungry. And the <em>smell</em>—” 
</p><p>
The smell of the other dead mech, Brainstorm surmised. He watched Perceptor climb in, too, and continue pulling fuel lines out of his chest to eat. 
</p><p>
“He was only going to cause more problems,” he added, “if you really intended to let him go.”
</p><p>
Brainstorm hesitated with his hand on the door. “Right,” he said. He didn’t care about Micronix, although he certainly had intended to let him go. He didn’t care about the guard either. What he <em>did</em> care about was his own plating—which felt very thin when he watched Perceptor peel Micronix open bare-handed, like a tin of ener-jelly.
</p><p>
“Um,” he said, admittedly not his best opener. “Are you—” He cleared out the static. “You’re not going to do that to me, right?” 
</p><p>
“If I was, I would be unlikely to mention it,” said Perceptor, which wasn’t <em>his</em> best opener, either. “But no. You said it was my job, do you not remember?”
</p><p>
Had he? He might’ve. Note to self: Perceptor was seriously listening when he spoke. It was a weird, heady novelty, and apparently also a dangerous one.
</p><p>
“Besides,” Perceptor said as an afterthought, delicately extracting a portion of Micronix’s fuel pump one-handed, “I cannot drive the carrier.”
</p><p>
Ah.
</p><p>
Brainstorm didn’t know how to drive the carrier, either, but he didn’t let that stop him. He took it in a wide circle around the pitted car park with its fitfully flickering lights, decided that it wasn’t that hard and people a great deal stupider than he was drove things like this all the time, and then took it on the road.
</p><p>
He picked their direction only by reference to the research facility. Since they clearly hadn’t contacted the enforcers, and Micronix wasn’t available to report back and make them do so, pursuit would at this time only come from the direction of the lab. So he aimed them away from it and drove. 
</p><p>
It might have been a lucky thing for Brainstorm that he had never driven anything before, because that meant that the driving occupied all his attention for the first several miles. His attention might otherwise have been fixed on what was happening on the broad stretch of floor between seats in the back. 
</p><p>
As it was, it was a silly hour of the morning in the grey dark gap between the rise and fall of Cybertron’s twin stars. It was almost deserted outside at this time of day, just the occasional night worker driving sleepily home, or the odd big rig thundering along on a long job.
</p><p>
It was not easy to focus on the road instead of the crunching noises Perceptor was making in the back there. Occasionally, they paused and Perceptor made a tiny, satisfied grunt that drew Brainstorm’s attention back there like iron shavings to a magnet. It was a perfectly innocent noise that just so happened to make Brainstorm twitch, and then he would remember, horribly, that it was actually prompted by consuming another mech. He looked over his wing, once, only, and all all his plating slicked right down, clamped hard in stress at the ugly scene. 
</p><p>
At length, Perceptor stumbled up from his grizzly repast and tumbled himself across two of the large seats in the back there. Then he fell into a recharge so deep it seemed almost deathlike. More than once, Brainstorm glanced back to make absolutely certain he wasn’t turning grey back there. 
</p><p>
By the time the second star cast its glow across the world, the roads were busier and Perceptor still hadn’t roused from his nap. He didn’t wake, in fact, until a red minibot swerved wildly around them and screamed, “Learn to <em>indicate</em>! Who the frag let a <em>plane</em> drive?”
</p><p>
“Ohh,” said Brainstorm thoughtfully. 
</p><p>
That made a lot of sense, actually—was that what those buttons were for?
</p><p>
At the burst of angry noise, Perceptor grunted from the back, which was something of a relief. 
</p><p>
“Hey,” said Brainstorm, neglecting to indicate again as he crossed two lanes to pull up, to a chorus of breaks and angry horns. Wow, cars sure were cranky about driving, huh? You’d think they’d be better at it. 
</p><p>
Perceptor rubbed his head, and then trailed his hand down to squeeze at his neck, pulling a face. His optics were not very bright as he looked around the dimly illuminated interior of the carrier shuttle. The scene was… bad. 
</p><p>
“Bet I can guess how they planned on getting you back to the lab,” Brainstorm quipped. 
</p><p>
“Yes,” sighed Perceptor. He closed his optics and pressed hard into his neck. His face went slack and his mouth dropped open, just a little. He released his neck with a grunt. “Unfortunately, I’ve become tolerant of the sedatives they use, and the higher doses come with side effects.”
</p><p>
Brainstorm watched avidly as he squeezed again.
</p><p>
“Is there, uh, anything I can do to help?” 
</p><p>
It occurred to Brainstorm that this wasn’t his brightest question even as he said it. He didn’t have so much as a circuit dampener in his subspace. 
</p><p>
Perceptor hesitated, though, and did not immediately reject the offer. Brainstorm’s good wing ticked up a little. </p><p>At length, he said, “Yes, actually… if you don’t mind it. It’s,” he twisted to angle his fingers beneath the long eyepiece on his shoulder, “There’s a fuel line in here—” He bent to show him what he meant. 
</p><p>
“I can see how that could be hard to get to from the front,” said Brainstorm. He scrambled back over the seating to get into the back. Having to pick his way around the reeking and dismembered parts back there was disgusting, but they were dead and he wasn’t, so he resolved not to care about it.</p><p>His wings vibrated and fluttered in his eagerness, prompting a dull ache from the injured one. 
</p><p>
“I think I know what it is,” he said, gently angling Perceptor so his back was to Brainstorm’s front. He laid the back of his hand on his spinal strut, wanting to avoid startling him. Perceptor didn’t even twitch at the touch of his fingers—he was already tense and tightly-wound. “It’s like—you compress the fuel lines to slow the pressure?”
</p><p>
There was a real term for it, but Brainstorm hadn’t studied the phenomenon. It was common in coders, mnemosurgeons and data workers, who used their internal processors to capacity at a high speed. Extensive practice at it encouraged high fuel flow—and when that wasn’t being used for fuelling the large amounts of information processing they were doing, it sped up sensory data until it overwhelmed them.
</p><p>
“Like this?” He dug his fingers in right beneath his plating, catching the fuel line and pressing it into the material beneath. 
</p><p>
Perceptor vented out, hard, and then put his own hand on Brainstorm’s wrist. It didn’t apply much pressure. “Exactly,” he said. 
</p><p>
“I roomed with a mnemosurgeon when I was studying—well, uh, a student-mnemosurgeon. I guess he’s a real one now, though. They get this because of data processing speed…”
</p><p>
He hadn’t seen Chromedome in years, actually. He knew where he was, though. Brainstorm liked to… quietly keep track, let’s say. Just in case.
</p><p>
…Mind you, the most he’d ever done for Chromedome was pull an ice pack out of the freezer.
</p><p>
Perceptor hummed. Brainstorm could feel his fuel pump beating hard against his fingers. 
</p><p>
“Where are you driving?” Perceptor wondered. He raised his hand to get the other side of his neck cabling, but Brainstorm got there first and batted it gently away. Perceptor let it fall without argument. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm frowned in concentration and then dug his thumb into the major line there. He could feel the change in fuel pressure in the other lines when he compressed it.
</p><p>
Perceptor made a soft, relieved noise and then slumped under his hands.
</p><p>Brainstorm’s body lit up like a fuel fire at the sound. He felt his plating crack open to dissipate heat faster and easier. 
</p><p>
“Um, just, nowhere, really,” he admitted, stumbling over the words. His hands were steady but he was still thinking about the little noise Perceptor had made, how nice it was that he was trusting him like this. “Away from the labs. And then I thought, if they do eventually call the enforcers, it’ll slow them down if we cross jurisdiction lines, so…”
</p><p>
Perceptor hummed quietly. Brainstorm could feel the vibration from his vocaliser with his fingertips. 
</p><p>
“The carrier will be registered,” he went on, gaining confidence as he went uncontested, “but if we can stop somewhere with an entry point into the systems I’ll just change it in the source database and it’ll propagate everywhere.” Unless some idiot had put the information on his own internal storage. But that was an information catastrophe waiting for a place to happen, surely.  It wasn’t likely. 
</p><p>
“You’re good at that, aren’t you?” Perceptor mused. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm did not know which part he meant, but he was a genius, so he just said, “I’m good at <em>so</em> many things.”
</p><p>
He got a soft huff at that. It might have been a laugh. He hoped it was a laugh. 
</p><p>
He rolled his fingers on the fuel line under Perceptor’s eyepiece in a tight little circle. Perceptor grunted softly.
</p><p>
“What’s the present status of your wing? If the pressure has stabilised it might be best to find somewhere to wash it out and oil it.”
</p><p>
Yes, a rust infection so deep inside would be a very bad time. Brainstorm felt a little queasy just thinking about it. 
</p><p>
“Probably.” He was not looking forward to the cleaning, either. “Either way, we should keep moving.”  
</p><p>
“Ah. Yes.”
</p><p>
Neither of them moved. Perceptor rolled his head gently back, just a little. 
</p><p>Brainstorm didn’t particularly want to take his hands off him, either. </p><p>“…Five minutes?”
</p><p>
“...Yes.”
</p><p>In the end it was more like ten, but Perceptor didn't say anything so Brainstorm didn't either. </p><p>
They left the major roads behind at the next turn off. </p><p>Brainstorm had flown over this territory more than once, but it looked completely new from the ground. Suddenly big rocks and crystal clusters, instead of being only an interesting texture, were genuine obstacles. It was interesting but also annoying. 
</p><p>
“We're going to need to find somewhere to leave those frames,” he said eventually, when just the rumble of the dead engine and its vibration in the seat beneath him became too much silence to tolerate. “Unless you want to leave the carrier, too?”
</p><p>
Perceptor had his optics shut, head bowed low. He looked deceptively delicate in the front seat. Despite his apparent inattention, he hummed to Brainstorm in response. 
</p><p>
“I think without you being able to fly, we will need a vehicle.”
</p><p>
Brainstorm nodded. “Alright.”
</p><p>
“I have also considered, however, the problem of this vehicle—will not they know which one Micronix took, whether or not it is registered to the laboratory?”
</p><p>
Brainstorm pulled a face. That was a good point—he could make sure they had no proof, but he couldn’t stop them from knowing the details. 
</p><p>
“…Yes,” he agreed reluctantly. He didn’t like it. But he knew from long frustrating experience that refusing to adapt when his conclusion didn’t hold up just made him feel stupid in the end—which was to be avoided at all costs. He hated other people thinking he was dumb, and the only thing worse was agreeing with them. 
</p><p>
But… he’d really been looking forward to showing off his data skills to Perceptor again. Not that Perceptor had been <em>that</em> impressed, really… but he <em>had</em> called him dashing. Brainstorm’s wings wiggled a tiny bit just at the thought. It made his spark chamber feel warm.
</p><p>
“No?” Perceptor said, apparently unprompted. 
</p><p>
Brainstorm glanced sideways to see him. Perceptor’s optics were cracked halfway, dimly lit. They were watching the leading edge of his nearest primary wing. Embarrassment caught Brainstorm off guard. He stilled the wing. 
</p><p>
“You’re right,” Brainstorm said, because he had to.
</p><p>
“You seem… uncomfortable.”
</p><p>
<em>Everyone is uncomfortable when they have to admit someone else is right</em>, Brainstorm thought sourly. But then he realised Perceptor was still looking at his wings.
</p><p>
“Is that injury still causing you pain?”
</p><p>
“A little,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true—the feeling had decayed to only a dull throb, except when he moved it against the seat backs by accident. But he didn’t want to try to explain the feeling to Perceptor, who somehow oozed effortless self-confidence. Even though he’d been, apparently, raised in a box.
</p><p>
“It might be infected. We should prioritise going somewhere where we’re able to clean it out.”
</p><p>
Aw, he’d made Perceptor all frowny.
</p><p>
“Sure,” he agreed lightly. “We’ll turn south for a bit along the next turn, dump the bodies, and then go get cleaned up at a fuel stop. They have those self-service ones up here, and the cameras aren’t worth slag. If you wipe down, nobody’ll be able to see the energon.
</p><p>
Perceptor looked down at himself. 
</p><p>
“Ah. Yes.” 
</p><p>
It took him several long moments to heave himself up and climb back into the back of the carrier to find something to wipe himself down. 
</p><p>
He looked steadier on his feet, but Brainstorm didn’t know if his exhaustion was the result of sedation or of the exertion of healing. He kind of hoped it was the second one. He wanted him to heal fast.
</p><p>
<em>What do you think he’ll do with you when he doesn’t need you?</em>
</p><p>
It was the same stupid internal voice that reminded Brainstorm of how pathetic it was to seek approval from a thing like Perceptor at all, or of how dumb he was for getting attached to anyone ever. Maybe Perceptor <em>would</em> leave him when he felt better. And so what? He was a grown, er, entity. It was his prerogative.
</p><p>
Brainstorm was pretty certain Perceptor wouldn’t <em>hurt</em> him now, no matter what his dark, circling thoughts wanted him to think. 
</p><p>
“Brains?” said Perceptor from the back. <em>There!</em> Brainstorm thought. Nobody gave cute dumb nicknames to things they planned to kill and eat. “Your field seems...” 
</p><p>
He paused, like he didn’t have the words—which was lucky, because Brainstorm didn’t want to hear them, at all, ever. 
</p><p>
“Yeah, I need fuel and recharge,” he said. It wasn’t a lie, really. And he didn’t want to demand reassurances from Perceptor either, as that felt vulnerable and needy and pathetic and, worst of all, risked him being unable to provide such an assurance.
</p><p>
“Here’s good enough,” he decided, throwing the carrier into park. “Let’s dump some dead bodies.”
</p><p>
Since apparently that was the done thing, now. 
</p><p>
“…alright,” said Perceptor, watching him.
</p><p>
The spot Brainstorm had selected seemed as good a place as any: it was out of the way, not very urbanised, and covered in dark crystal outcroppings that shaded the road from the sky and littered the ground with odd rainbow patterns that confused the optic. Brainstorm got out, mindful of the strain on his wing, and threw the door open with a heave and a loud grating noise. 
</p><p>
Perceptor took the bodies out. 
</p><p>
They were in pieces—Perceptor had cracked them open like shelled delicacies to get to the sentio metallico in their chests and heads, but he hadn’t stopped there. Micronix’s arms and legs were in pieces, armour peeled back in long, ugly curls. His eyepiece had been disassembled. Even the bodies’ interfacing hardware had been taken apart to be scoured clean of precious sentio mtallico, a thing that seemed somehow more embarrassing than the mess Perceptor had made of their spark chambers.
</p><p>
Brainstorm watched, glad that Perceptor didn’t seem to be looking to him for help. 
</p><p>
It occurred to him that Micronix probably had money on him somewhere, but he took one look at the gory mess and thought: <em>I don’t want it enough.</em>
</p><p>
He said nothing at all, and only laughed nervously when Perceptor said he was done.
</p><p>
They climbed back in, changed direction once more, and kept going. 
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I got a little distracted by writing researcher percy meeting mermaid brainstorm for another fic that came out of nowhere, but here's the update for this one, just later than i thought oops</p><p>If you liked anything please feel free to let me know, and otherwise i hope you have a good morning.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>multiple comparisons to other works have put me in a weird place on this and I have disabled comments until I know if I am capable of continuing it or if I will need to get rid of it.</p><p>Edit: okay I have determined to stop being weird about it, we just uhhhh took a little break for my brain. sorry, readers ._.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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